Poems: "Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive"

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22nd February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters.

Her early years were tinted with much difficulty; divorced parents, poverty and a constant change of location.

Despite this once settled in Camden, Maine Edna developed her literary talents at a furious rate. By 15, she had published her poetry in the popular children's magazine St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and the high-profile anthology Current Literature.

In 1912, at 20, she entered her poem ‘Renascence’ in The Lyric Year poetry contest. Despite being considered the best poem it was only given fourth place. The ensuing uproar brought publicity and the offer of funding for her education at Vassar College. Here she wrote, both verse and plays as well as embarking on a series of affairs with women as she explored the wider world and all it offered.

Edna achieved significant fame when she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for ‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’. It was a magnificent triumph.

She married Eugen Jan Boissevain but on her wedding day she fell ill and he drove her to Manhattan for emergency surgery. He nursed her back to health with remarkable devotion. They were together, in an open marriage, until his death in 1949.

In the summer of 1936, Edna was riding in a station wagon when the door swung open and she was hurled into the pitch-darkness and rolled into a rocky gully. She survived but with severely damaged nerves in her spine and was to live the rest of her life in pain.

In 1942 in an article for The New York Times Magazine, Edna mourned the callous destruction of the Czechoslovak town of Lidice by Nazi forces in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The article would serve as the basis of her 32-page poem, ‘Murder of Lidice’ in 1942.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, after suffering a heart attack, fell down the stairs and died at her home on 19th October 1950. She was 58 years old.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Portable Poetry
• Release date: Jun 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839675300

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters, and was encouraged by her mother to develop her talents for music and poetry. Her long poem "Renascence" won critical attention in an anthology contest in 1912 and secured for her a patron who enabled her to go to Vassar College. After graduating in 1917 she lived in Greenwich Village in New York for a few years, acting, writing satirical pieces for journals (usually under a pseudonym), and continuing to work at her poetry. She traveled in Europe throughout 1921-22 as a "foreign correspondent" for Vanity Fair. Her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) gained her a reputation for hedonistic wit and cynicism, but her other collections (including the earlier Renascence and Other Poems [1917]) are without exception more seriously passionate or reflective. In 1923 she married Eugene Boissevain and -- after further travel -- embarked on a series of reading tours which helped to consolidate her nationwide renown. From 1925 onwards she lived at Steepletop, a farmstead in Austerlitz, New York, where her husband protected her from all responsibilities except her creative work. Often involved in feminist or political causes (including the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1927), she turned to writing anti-fascist propaganda poetry in 1940 and further damaged a reputation already in decline. In her last years of her life she became more withdrawn and isolated, and her health, which had never been robust, became increasingly poor. She died in 1950.

Book preview

Poems by Edna St Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22nd February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters. 

Her early years were tinted with much difficulty; divorced parents, poverty and a constant change of location.

Despite this once settled in Camden, Maine Edna developed her literary talents at a furious rate.  By 15, she had published her poetry in the popular children's magazine St. Nicholas, the Camden Herald, and the high-profile anthology Current Literature.

In 1912, at 20, she entered her poem ‘Renascence’ in The Lyric Year poetry contest. Despite being considered the best poem it was only given fourth place. The ensuing uproar brought publicity and the offer of funding for her education at Vassar College.  Here she wrote, both verse and plays as well as embarking on a series of affairs with women as she explored the wider world and all it offered.

Edna achieved significant fame when she won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923 for ‘The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver’.  It was a magnificent triumph.

She married Eugen Jan Boissevain but on her wedding day she fell ill and he drove her to Manhattan for emergency surgery.  He nursed her back to health with remarkable devotion.  They were together, in an open marriage, until his death in 1949.

In the summer of 1936, Edna was riding in a station wagon when the door swung open and she was hurled into the pitch-darkness and rolled into a rocky gully.  She survived but with severely damaged nerves in her spine and was to live the rest of her life in pain.

In 1942 in an article for The New York Times Magazine, Edna mourned the callous destruction of the Czechoslovak town of Lidice by Nazi forces in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. The article would serve as the basis of her 32-page poem, ‘Murder of Lidice’ in 1942.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, after suffering a heart attack, fell down the stairs and died at her home on 19th October 1950. She was 58 years old.

Index of Contents

Section One

Renascence                                   

God’s World                                  

Afternoon on a Hill                          

Journey                                      

Sorrow                                       

Tavern                                       

Ashes of Life                                

The Little Ghost                             

Kin to Sorrow                                

Three Songs of Shattering                    

The Shroud                                 

The Dream                                    

Indifference                                 

Witch-Wife                                   

Blight                                       

When the Year Grows Old                      

Unnamed Sonnets I - V                         

Sonnet VI (Bluebeard)                        

Section Two

I                                            

II                                           

Recuerdo                                     

Thursday                                     

To the Not Impossible Him                    

The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge       

Humoresque                                   

She is Overheard Singing                     

The Unexplorer                               

Grown-up                                     

The Penitent                                 

Daphne                                      

Portrait by a Neighbour                      

The Merry Maid                               

To S. M.                                     

The Philosopher                              

Sonnet—Love, Though for This                

Sonnet—I Think I Should Have Loved You      

Sonnet—Oh, Think Not I am Faithful          

Sonnet—I Shall Forget You Presently         

Section Three

Spring                                       

City Trees                                   

The Blue-Flag in the Bog                     

Eel-Grass                                   

Elegy Before Death                           

The Bean-Stalk                               

Weeds                                        

Passer Mortuus Est                           

Pastoral                                     

Assault                                      

Travel                                       

Low-Tide                                    

Song of a Second April                       

The Poet and His Book                        

Alms                                        

Inland                                      

To a Poet that Died Young                  

Wraith                                      

Ebb                                         

Elaine                                      

Burial                                     

Mariposa                                    

Doubt No More That Oberon                   

Lament                                      

Exiled                                      

The Death of Autumn                         

Ode to Silence                              

Memorial to D. C.                           

Unnamed Sonnets, I - XII                      

Wild Swans                                  

Edna St Vincent Millay – A Short Biography

Edna St Vincent Millay – A Concise Bibliography

SECTION ONE

Renascence

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I’d started from

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see:

These were the things that bounded me;

And I could touch them with my hand,

Almost, I thought, from where I stand.

And all at once things seemed so small

My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;

Miles and miles above my head;

So here upon my back I’ll lie

And look my fill into the sky.

And so I looked, and, after all,

The sky was not so very tall.

The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,

And—sure enough!—I see the top!

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

I ’most could touch it with my hand!

And reaching up my hand to try,

I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity

Came down and settled over me;

Forced back my scream into my chest,

Bent back my arm upon my breast,

And, pressing of the Undefined

The definition on my mind,

Held up before my eyes a glass

Through which my shrinking sight did pass

Until it