Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millaywas an American poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work. The poet Richard Wilbur asserted, "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth22 February 1892
CountryUnited States of America
wall night men
And what are you that, missing you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that’s a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man in my mind? Yet women’s ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,— And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well?
heart sides world
The world stands out on either side, No wider than the heart is wide.
two light sun
If I could have two things in one: the peace of the grave, and the light of the sun.
hands sky reaching-up
And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.
matter ifs
You are loved. If so, what else matters?
wings bird together
To a Young Poet Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird. Bird and wing together Go down, one feather. No thing that ever flew, Not the lark, not you, Can die as others do.
thinking clouds remember-you
I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To 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 treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity, - let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again.
young fingers born
The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.
down-and infinity
I screamed, and--lo!--Infinity Came down and settled over me
education growing-up children
Oh, children, growing up to be Adventurers into sophistry, Forbear, forbear to be of those That read the rood to learn the rose.
sleep cutting years
Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end!
flower cups april
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.
running dream song
Ah, drink again This river that is the taker-away of pain, And the giver-back of beauty! In these cool waves What can be lost?-- Only the sorry cost Of the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself! The level flood that laves The hot brow And the stiff shoulder Is at our temples now. Gone is the fever, But not into the river; Melted the frozen pride, But the tranquil tide Runs never the warmer for this, Never the colder. Immerse the dream. Drench the kiss. Dip the song in the stream.
shelter
There is no shelter in you anywhere.