Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes - Page 2

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

Music my rampart, and my only one.

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

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

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

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

They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don't think it's possible for you to miss me as much as I'm missing you right now

The longest absence is less perilous to love than the terrible trials of incessant proximity.

There is no shelter in you anywhere.

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!

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

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!

You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It’s only that.

A ghost in marble of a girl you knew Who would have loved you in a day or two.

I am waylaid by beauty.

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

Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost, but climb.

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

Oh, you mean I'm a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too, but what's that got to do with my headache?

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. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.

Night falls fast. Today is in the past.

pity me that the heart is slow to learn what the swift mind beholds at every turn.

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?

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.

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.