Vincent Millay
Vincent Millay
inspirational trials absence
The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.
beauty all-things
Beauty in all things-no, we cannot hope for that; but some place set apart for it.
beauty giving joy
Beauty is whatever gives joy.
fall past night
Night falls fast. Today is in the past.
relationship summer unrequited-love
I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.
music wish-to-die should
Without music I should wish to die.
song reading eye
Cruel of heart, lay down my song. Your reading eyes have done me wrong. Not for you was the pen bitten, And the mind wrung, and the song written.
autumn dust names
Now the autumn shudders In the rose's root. Far and wide the ladders Lean among the fruit. Now the autumn clambers Up the trellised frame, And the rose remembers The dust from which it came. Brighter than the blossom On the rose's bough Sits the wizened orange, Bitter berry now; Beauty never slumbers; All is in her name; But the rose remembers The dust from which it came.
past lasts saws
I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, and present, and forevermore.
hair hands shoes
I dread no more the first white in my hair, Or even age itself, the easy shoe, The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair: Time, doing this to me, may alter too My anguish, into something I can bear
sweet flower sleep
Not poppy, nor mandrake, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep, Which thou owest yesterday.
life pain self
And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you all 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?
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.