Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

1892–1950 United States

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

United States
20th-century poets
Authors
Feminists

Also known as: Millay, Edna St. Vincent, Nancy Boyd

Random Edna St. Vincent Millay quote

22 quotes

Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath;
Here's a song was never sung:
Growing old is dying young.

Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand;
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

Renascence (1912)

After all, my earstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Now that love is perished?

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.

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

Fatal Interview (1931)

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain … Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

Not Truth, but Faith, it is
That keeps the world alive.

My heart is warm with 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.

Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric

"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!"

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.
Nobody that matters, that is.

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.

… one damn thing after another … one damn thing over and over.

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.

It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go.

Departure (1918)

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.

Sonnet XXX from Fatal Interview (1931)

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill...

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Edna St. Vincent Millay (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.