I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
Quotations by:
Millay, Edna St. Vincent
I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof
In some firm fabric, woven in and out;
Your golden filaments in fair design
Across my duller fibre.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
“Interim,” Renascence and Other Poems (1917)
(Source)
After all, my earstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
“Passer Mortuus Est”, st. 3, Second April (1921)
(Source)
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad.
And, “One thing there’s no getting by —
I’ve been a wicked girl.” said I;
“But if I can’t be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!”Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
“The Penitent”, st. 3, A Few Figs from Thistles (1921)
(Source)
Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading letters, finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
“The Poet and His Book,” st. 6, Second April (1921)
(Source)
I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
“When I too long have looked upon your face,” ll. 5-8, Second April, Sonnet 7 (1921)
(Source)
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
A person who publishes a book wilfully appears before the populace with his pants down.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Letter (1927-05-25) to Cora B. Millay
(Source)
Letter to her mother trying to calm Cora's nerves about sister Kathleen's impending first book of poetry. The letter is collected in Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1952) [ed. Allan Ross MacDougall].
This passage is almost universally misquoted as "A person who publishes a book wilfully appears before the public with his pants down" (italics mine).
Another variant appears here. It shortens the first sentence, and then pulls in (and re-genders) two sentences from later in the letter:A writer appears before the public with his pants down. If it is a good book, nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him.
It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another — it’s one damn thing over & over — there’s the rub — first you get sick — then you get sicker — then you get not quite so sick — then you get hardly sick at all — then you get a little sicker — then you get a lot sicker — then you get not quite so sick — oh, hell.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Letter (1930-10-24) to Arthur Davison Ficke
(Source)
See Hubbard, Scalzi.
More information about this quotation: It’s Not True That Life Is One Damn Thing After Another—It’s One Damn Thing Over and Over – Quote Investigator®.
Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the day-time, and falling into at night.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Letter to Whitter “Hal” Bynner and Arthur Davidson Ficke (1920)
(Source)
PIERROT:I love
Humanity; but I hate people.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Play (1920), Aria da Capo
(Source)
Millay's comment on the socialist movement.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the Earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who 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.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1920-03), “Spring,” ll. 16-18
First published in The Chapbook, Vol. 2, No. 13 (1920-07). Collected in Second April (1921). A handwritten draft was dated 1920-03-21.
Graham Greene's Babbling April (1925) was named after these lines.
With him for a sire and her for a dam,
What should I be but just what I am?Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1920-11), “The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge,” Vanity Fair, Vol. 14, No. 3
(Source)
Collected in A Few Figs from Thistles (1921).
"Singing-Woman" is usually hyphenated in collections, but in Vanity Fair it was rendered "Singin' Woman" and in the original publication in Figs as "Singingwoman".
Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1920), “Grown-Up,” A Few Figs from Thistles, (1921, expanded ed.)
(Source)
The poem was not in the original 1920 publication.
Death devours all lovely things.
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness. Presently
Every bed is narrow.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1921-03), “Passer Mortuus est,” st. 1, The Century Magazine, Vol. 101/79, No. 5
A reference to (and, in the title, quote from) Catullus' poem about the death of his beloved Lesbia's beloved sparrow (1, 2).
Collected in Second April (1921), with slightly different punctuation.Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness, -- presently
Every bed is narrow.
It is this latter punctuation that is generally used in later printings.
And what are you that, missing you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1921-10-31), “The Philosopher,” st. 1, Ainslee’s Magazine, Vol. 48, No. 3
(Source)
First collected in A Few Figs from Thistles (1922).
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind.
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1934), “Conscientious Objector,” l. 8, Wine from These Grapes, sec. 4
(Source)
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,
But climb.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1934), “On Thought in Harness,” Wine from These Grapes, Part 4 (1934)
(Source)
If I would help the weak, I must be fed
In wit and purpose, pour away despair
And rinse the cup, eat happiness like bread.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Poem (1940), “I must not die of pity; I must live,” ll. 12-14, Make Bright the Arrows, ch. 5 “Sonnets,” No. 6
(Source)
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!
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!
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 me
A little while, that in me sings no more.Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) American poet
Sonnet 43 “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,” ll. 9ff. (1920), The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)
(Source)
Originally published in Vanity Fair (1920-11).