ESEdna St. Vincent Millay

64 collected words

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Dates not recorded

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

01Undated

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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02Undated

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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03Undated

When this book is mould,And a book of manyWaiting to be soldFor a casual penny,In a little open case,In a street unclean and cluttered,Where a heavy mud is spatteredFrom the passing drays,Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters, findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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04Undated

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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05Undated

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,But climb.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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06Undated

I, being born a woman and distressedBy all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to findYour person fair, and feel a certain zestTo 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 treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or seasonMy scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reasonFor conversation when we meet again.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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07Undated

I know not how such things can be;I only know there came to meA fragrance such as never clingsTo aught save happy living things;A sound as of some joyous elfSinging sweet songs to please himself,And, through and over everything,A sense of glad awakening.The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,Whispering to me I could hear;I felt the rain’s cool finger-tipsBrushed tenderly across my lips,Laid gently on my sealed sight,And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see!—A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a quickening gustOf wind blew up to me and thrustInto my face a miracleOf orchard-breath, and with the smell,—I know not how such things can be!—I breathed my soul back into me.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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08Undated

Lie down beside these watersThat bubble from the spring;Hear in the desert silenceThe desert sparrow sing;Draw from the shapeless momentSuch 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 grimDeep empty gaze upon you,—Expect no more from him.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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09Undated

The mind, at length bereftOf thinking and its pain,Will soon disperse again,And nothing will remain:No, not a thing be left.Only the ardent eye,Only the listening earCan say, "The thrush was here!"Can say, "His song was clear!"Can live, before it die.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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10Undated

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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11Undated

I turn away reluctant from your light,And stand irresolute, a mind undone,A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sightFrom having looked too long upon the sun.Then is my daily life a narrow roomIn which a little while, uncertainly,Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,Among familiar things grown strange to meMaking my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,Till I become accustomed to the dark.

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12Undated

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.

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13Undated

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

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14Undated

And so beneath the weight lay IAnd suffered death, but could not die.

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15Undated

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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16Undated

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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17Undated

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 coolsBending a respectful nose above such dried philosophiesAs 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 fissureIn such behaviour.

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18Undated

Lost in Hell,-Persephone,Take her head upon your knee;Say to her, "My dear, my dear,It is not so dreadful here.

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19Undated

Am I kin to Sorrow,That so oftFalls the knocker of my door—Neither loud nor soft,But as long accustomed—Under Sorrow’s hand?

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20Undated

Sorrow like a ceaseless rainBeats upon my heart.People twist and scream in pain,—Dawn will find them still again;This has neither wax nor wane,Neither stop nor start.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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21Undated

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death.

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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22Undated

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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23Undated

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

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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24Undated

Strong sun, that bleachThe curtains of my room, can you not renderColourless this dress I wear?—This violent plaidOf purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripeOf thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds doneThrough indolence, high judgments given in haste;The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?

Edna St. Vincent Millay / quote

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