Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

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!

Beautiful as a dandelion-blossom golden in the green grass, this life can be.

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.

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

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

There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going.

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

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

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.

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.

Beautiful as a dandelion-blossom, golden in the green grass, This life can be. Common as a dandelion-blossom, beautiful in the clean grass, not beautiful Because common, beautiful because beautiful, Noble because common, because free.

You are loved. If so, what else matters?

Life must go on; I forget just why.

My heart is warm with the 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.

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.

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?

Summer set lip to earth's bosom bare, And left the flushed print in a poppy there. I will touch a hundred flowers And not pick one.

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

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

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.

Beauty never slumbers; All is in her name; But the rose remembers The dust from which it came.

The younger generation forms a country of its own. It has no geographical boundaries. I've talked with young Hungarians in Budapest, with young Italians in Rome, with young Frenchmen in Paris, and with young people all over. ... These young people are going to do things. They are going to change things.

I love humanity but I hate people.

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.

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

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!

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

The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.

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.

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.

This book, when I am dead, will be A little faint perfume of me. People who knew me well will say, She really used to think that way.

Beauty is whatever gives joy.

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.

[on going to Sunday school:] It looks like rain, and I hope it will rain cats and dogs and hammers and pitchforks and silver sugar spoons and hay ricks and paper-covered novels and picture frames and rag carpets and toothpicks and skating rinks and birds of paradise and roof gardens and burdocks and French grammars before Sunday school time.

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

There is no shelter in you anywhere.

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.

Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind Blow over me

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

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

I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind.

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

The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief or grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been Very pretty.

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!

Spring TO what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. 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.

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."

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.

And all the loveliest things there be come simply, so it seems to me.