Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

You leave me much against my will.

Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings;

That which has quelled me, lives with me, Accomplice in catastrophe.

After all, my erstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?

It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go.

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

The poem is the thing. Is it interesting? – Is it beautiful? –Is it sublime? Then it was written by nobody. It exists by itself.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — It gives a lovely light!

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!

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.

There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so with his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, 'There is no memory of him here!'
And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture, — a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea