Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry — We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable — But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry — We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

14. Indifference

I SAID, — for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come, — “I’ll hear his step and know his step when I am warm in bed;
But I’ll never leave my pillow, though there be some
As would let him in — and take him in with tears!” I said.
I lay, — for Love was laggard, O, he came not until dawn, — 5
I lay and listened for his step and could not get to sleep;
And he found me at my window with my big cloak on,
All sorry with the tears some folks might weep!

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Learn to love blackness while there is yet time, blackness
Unpatterned, blackness without horizons.

into the darkness they go, the wise & the lovely

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.

"Passer Mortuus Est", st. 3, Second April, 1921

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

You go no more on your exultant feet
Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view, — But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair, — and the long year remembers you.

The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw, — it must have been
Very pretty.

The younger generation forms a country of its own.

Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.

"PIERROT: Of course not. There never was. "Moon's" just a word to swear by. "Mutton!" — now there's a thing you can lay the hands on, And set the tooth in! Listen, Columbine: I always lied about the moon and you. Food is my only lust. COLUMBINE: Well, eat it, then, For Heaven's sake, and stop your silly noise! I haven't heard the clock tick for an hour."

How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line

There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough.