Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning, but the rainIs full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sighUpon the glass and listen for reply,And in my heart there stirs a quiet painFor unremembered lads that not againWill turn to me at midnight with a cry.Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:I cannot say what loves have come and gone,I only know that summer sang in meA little while, that in me sings no more.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know I am but summer to your heart,And not the full four seasons of the year;And you must welcome from another partSuch noble moods as are not mine, my dear.No gracious weight of golden fruits to sellHave I, nor any wise and wintry thing;And I have loved you all too long and wellTo carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and roseWhen I come back to you, as summer comes.Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

My heart is warm with the friends I make,And better friends I'll not be knowing,Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,No matter where it's going.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Music, my rampart and my only one.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;In my own way, and with my full consent.Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarelyWent to their deaths more proud than this one went.Some nights of apprehension and hot weepingI will confess; but that's permitted me;Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keepingRubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.If I had loved you less or played you slylyI might have held you for a summer more,But at the cost of words I value highly,And no such summer as the one before.Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,I shall have only good to say of you.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI'll make you little jackets;I'll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There'll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the penniesTo save in his bank;Anne shall have the keysTo 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.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

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!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will come back to you, I swear I will;And you will know me still.I shall be only a little tallerThan when I went.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

TO what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with youall through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed,Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?-And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see, --A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a quickening gustOf wind blew up to me and thrustInto my face a miracleOf orchard-breath, and with the smell, --I know not how such things can be! --I breathed my soul back into me.Ah! Up then from the ground sprang IAnd hailed the earth with such a cryAs is not heard save from a manWho has been dead, and lives again.About the trees my arms I wound;Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;I raised my quivering arms on high;I laughed and laughed into the sky

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Still must the poet as of old,In barren attic bleak and cold,Starve, freeze, and fashion verses toSuch things as flowers and song and you;Still as of old his being giveIn Beauty's name, while she may live,Beauty that may not die as longAs there are flowers and you and song.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Moon, that against the lintel of the westYour forehead lean until the gate be swung,Longing to leave the world and be at rest,Being worn with faring and no longer young,Do you recall at all the Carian hillWhere worn with loving, loving late you lay,Halting the sun because you lingered still,While wondering candles lit the Carian day?Ah, if indeed this memory to your mindRecall some sweet employment, pity me,That even now the dawn's dim herald see!I charge you, goddess, in the name of oneYou loved as well: endure, hold off the sun.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

When this book is mould,And a book of manyWaiting to be soldFor a casual penny,In a little open case,In a street unclean and cluttered,Where a heavy mud is spatteredFrom the passing drays,Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters, findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,But climb.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, being born a woman and distressedBy all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to findYour person fair, and feel a certain zestTo bear your body's weight upon my breast;So subtly is the fume of life designed,To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,And leave me once again undone, possessed.Think not for this, however, the poor treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or seasonMy scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reasonFor conversation when we meet again.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know not how such things can be;I only know there came to meA fragrance such as never clingsTo aught save happy living things;A sound as of some joyous elfSinging sweet songs to please himself,And, through and over everything,A sense of glad awakening.The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,Whispering to me I could hear;I felt the rain’s cool finger-tipsBrushed tenderly across my lips,Laid gently on my sealed sight,And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see!—A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a quickening gustOf wind blew up to me and thrustInto my face a miracleOf orchard-breath, and with the smell,—I know not how such things can be!—I breathed my soul back into me.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Lie down beside these watersThat bubble from the spring;Hear in the desert silenceThe desert sparrow sing;Draw from the shapeless momentSuch pattern as you can;And cleave henceforth to Beauty;Expect no more from man.Man, with his ready answer,His sad and hearty word,For every cause in limbo,For every debt deferred,For every pledge forgotten,His eloquent and grimDeep empty gaze upon you,—Expect no more from him.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

The mind, at length bereftOf thinking and its pain,Will soon disperse again,And nothing will remain:No, not a thing be left.Only the ardent eye,Only the listening earCan say, The thrush was here!Can say, His song was clear!Can live, before it die.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I turn away reluctant from your light,And stand irresolute, a mind undone,A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sightFrom having looked too long upon the sun.Then is my daily life a narrow roomIn which a little while, uncertainly,Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,Among familiar things grown strange to meMaking my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,Till I become accustomed to the dark.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

And so beneath the weight lay IAnd suffered death, but could not die.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice, had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

It is impossible for me to be an Anarchist, for I do not believe in the essential goodness of man. The world, the physical world, that was once all in all to me, has at moments such as these no road through a wood, no stretch of shore, that can bring me comfort. The beauty of these things can no longer at such moments make up to me at all for the ugliness of man, his cruelty, his greed, his lying face.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

I avoid the looming visitor,Flee him adroitly around corners,Hating him, wishing him well;Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise true:That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied;And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the sonnet coolsBending a respectful nose above such dried philosophiesAs have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since I was a child.Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt,There may be.But not enough to keep a bird alive.There is a flaw amounting to a fissureIn such behaviour.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Lost in Hell,-Persephone,Take her head upon your knee;Say to her, My dear, my dear,It is not so dreadful here.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay