Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

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

It's not love's going hurts my days
But that it went in little ways.

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.

Time can make soft that iron wood.

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

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.

Ashes of Life"

Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will, and would that night were here!
But ah! to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again! with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.

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We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

God, I can push the grass apart and lay my finger on Thy heart.

Under my head till morning; but the rain, Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh, Upon the glass and listen for reply ...

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.

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 rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I 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.

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

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.

One things there's no getting by,
I've been a wicked girl,
Says I ...
But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad !

Pour away despair and rinse the cup. Eat happiness like bread.

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

The heart grows weary after a little Of what it loved for a little while.

Marriage ... one of the most civilized institutions in the world ... But ... swimming is one of the most wonderful of sports, and yet there are always some people who cannot swim who insist on going into the water and getting drowned. Many people spoil marriage in a like manner. One should be sure she knows how to be married before rushing into it.

What should I be
but just what I am?

The world stands out on either side, No wider than the heart is wide.

You are loved. If so, what else matters?

If you walk east at daybreak from the town
To the cliff's foot, by climbing steadily
You cling at noon whence there is no way down
But to go toppling backward to the sea.
And not for birds nor birds' eggs, so they say,
But for a flower that in these fissures grows,
Forms have been seen to move throughout the day
Skyward; but what its name is no one knows.
'Tis said you find beside them on the sand
This flower, relinquished by the broken hand.

I have learned to fail. And I have had my say.

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

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

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

The Unexplorer"

There was a road ran past our house
Too lovely to explore.
I asked my mother once - she said
That if you followed where it led
It brought you to the milk-man's door.
(That's why I have not traveled more.)

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Need we say it was not love, Now that love is perished?

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.

A grave is such a quiet place.

It may be said of me by Harper & Brothers, that although I reject their proposals, I welcome their advances.

But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!

Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart. I took your thrust, whereby I since am slain, And I lie disheveled in the grass apart, A sodden thing bedrenched by tears and rain.

Should at that moment the full moon Step forth upon the hill, And memories hard to bear at noon, By moonlight harder still, Form in the shadows of the trees,
Things that you could not spare And live, or so you thought, yet these All gone, and you still there, A man no longer what he was, Not yet the thing he planned ...

Take up the song; forget the epitaph.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning, but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will 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 me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

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.

Why do you follow me?-
Any moment I can be
Nothing but a laurel tree.

Any moment of the chase
I can leave you in my place
A pink bough for your embrace.

Yet if over hill and hollow
Still it is your will to follow,
I am off; - to heel, Apollo!

For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire, –
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, - then mourned for all!

O troubled forms, O early love unfortunate and hard,
Time has estranged you into a jewel cold and pure

To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak ...

Life is a quest and love a quarrel

How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers The buck in the snow ... Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.

For the body at best
Is a bundle of aches,
Longing for rest;
It cries when it wakes.

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.

Heap not on this mound roses that she loved so well; why bewilder her with roses that she cannot see or smell.

Life must go on; I forget just why.

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

I do believe the most of me
Floats under water; and men see
Above the wave a jagged small
Mountain of ice, and that is all.
Only the depths of other peaks

May know my substance when it speaks,
And steadfast through the grinding jam
Remain aware of what I am.
Myself, I think, shall never know
How far beneath the wave I go.

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world - it is thin.

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

11.

If it should rain --(the sneezy moon
Said: Rain)--then I shall hear it soon
From shingles into gutters fall...
And know of what concerns me, all:

The garden will be wet till noon--
I may not walk-- my temper leans
To myths and legends--through the beans
Till they are dried-- lest I should spread
Diseases they have never had.

I hear the rain: it comes down straight.
Now I can sleep, I need not wait
To close the windows anywhere.

Tomorrow, it may be, I might
Do things to set the whole world right.
There's nothing I can do tonight.

I am not afraid of lawyers as I used to be. They are lambs in wolves' clothing.

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!

I love humanity but I hate people.

Father, I beg of Thee a little task To dignify my days, 'tis all I ask.

I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me.

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

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

Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

I am all the time talking about you, and bragging, to one person or another. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had a tale in his heart he must unfold to all. I am always buttonholing somebody and saying, "Someday you must meet my mother."

The only people I really hate are servants. They're not really human beings at all.

The soul can split the sky in two and let the face of God shine through.

The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed
uprooted-
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.

Man has never been the same since God died.

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

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 cools

Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies
As 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 fissure
In such behaviour.

She is happy where she lies
With the dust upon her eyes.

Beauty in all things-no, we cannot hope for that; but some place set apart for it.

The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here - but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel!

into the darkness they go, the wise & the lovely

The younger generation forms a country of its own.

Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore! And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me, I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly That I might eat again, and met thy sneers With deprecations, and thy blows with tears, ...

When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning there remains
No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,
This be our solace: that it was not said
When we were young and warm and in our prime,
Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time.

I met the wolf alone and was devoured in peace.

You wrote me a beautiful letter, I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was. I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is of the nature of love ... When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness; know that it is a proud surrender to You.

Give back my book and take my kiss instead.

Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness
presently
Every bed is narrow.

Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.

All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed ...

- Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest,
Bent back my arm upon my breast

Oh, the things I haven't seen and the things I haven't known,
What with hedges and ditches till after I was grown,
And yanked both ways by my mother and my father,
With a "Which would you better?" and a "Which would you rather?"

With him for a sire and her for a dam,
What should I be but just what I am?

Death devours all lovely things.

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.

Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare.

Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.

Relaxing me from head to feet
Love masters me, the bitter sweet
O'er thy limbs breathing;
Yea, Eros now, the god born blind
Sweeps my soul like the mountain wind
Through the oaks seething.

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,
Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.

Lie down beside these waters
That bubble from the spring;
Hear in the desert silence
The desert sparrow sing;

Draw from the shapeless moment
Such 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 grim
Deep empty gaze upon you, -
Expect no more from him.

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.

I am not a tentative person. Whatever I do, I give up my whole self to it ...

The Fugitive"

Thanks be to God the world is wide,
And I am going far from home,
For I forgot in Camelot
The man I loved in Rome,

And I forgot in Kensington
The man I loved in Kew;
And there must be a place for me
To think no more of you.

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If in the moonlight from the silent bough
Suddenly with precision speak your name
The nightingale, be not assured that now
His wing is limed and his wild virtue tame.
Beauty beyond all feathers that have flown
Is free; you shall not hood her to your wrist,
Nor sting her eyes, nor have her for your own
In any fashion; beauty billed and kissed
Is not your turtle; tread her like a dove -
She loves you not; she never heard of love.

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

And as it went my tortured soul
(...) That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now,
Cool is its hands upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.

I hate people but I love gatherings.

The Englishman foxtrots as he fox-hunts, with all his being, through thickets, through ditches, over hedges, through chiffons, through waiters, over saxophones, to the victorious finish; and who goes home depends on how many the ambulance will accommodate.