A mini-anthology compiled by Chuck Sanders, Vice Dean, School of Medicine Basic Sciences
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892, and she and her two sisters were raised in near poverty by their mother in Maine.
Having placed in a national poetry competition at 20, she was admitted to Vassar College, where a generous matron paid her fees. After graduating from Vassar, she spent the second half of her 20s living in Greenwich Village, New York, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923.
She wrote the first three poems presented below during this Bohemian period of her life. The fourth, longer poem was her final poem, which was published in the Saturday Evening Post just after the start of the Korean War and only a month after her tragic death in October 1950 in her home, Steepletop, near Austerlitz, New York.
Assault
I.
I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.
II.
I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!
Sonnet
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you–think not but I would!–
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.
First Fig
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!
Thanksgiving … 1950
Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn,
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings;
To sit at the bright feast, and with ruddy cheer
Give thanks for the harvest of a troubled year.
The clouds move and shift, withdraw to new positions on the hills;
The sky above us is a thinning haze—a patch of blue appears—
We yearn toward the blue sky as toward the healing of all our ills;
But the storm has not gone over; the clouds come back;
The blue sky turns black;
And the muttering thunder suddenly crashes close, and once again
Flashes of lightening startle the rattling windowpane;
Then once more pours and splashes down the cold, discouraging rain.
Ah, but is it right to feast in a time so solemn?
Should we not, rather, fast—and give the day to prayer?
Prayer, yes; but fasting, no.
Soldier and citizen alike, we are a marching column,
And how long the march may be, and over what terrain
We do not know;
Nor how much hardship, and hunger, how much of pain
We may be called upon to endure. And fortitude
Takes muscle; and needs food.
Never more dear than in a thoughtful hour like this
Are the faces about the table: each stands out
More sharply than before, and is looked at with a longer glance.
And smiles are deep, from behind the eyes, and somewhat quizzical,
Lest they go too far in tenderness.
God bless the harvest of this haggard year;
Pity our hearts, that did so long for Peace;
Deal with us kindly: there are many here
Who love their fellow man (and may their tribe increase).
But cunning and guile persist; ferocity empowers
The lifted arm of the aggressor: the times are bad.
Let us give thanks for the courage that was always ours;
And pray for the wisdom which we never had.
This is nothing new—that we should be attacked
While we are napping: is it not always so?—
And, dazed and unprepared, start up to act,
Rubbing our eyes, not knowing where to go?
Yet the trained hand does not forget its skill;
Nor can we lay precision and speed aside:
Strength we have, and courage; an acetylene will;
A timorous vigilance; but a brave pride.
From the apprehensive present, from a future packed
With unknown dangers, monstrous, terrible and new—
Let us turn for comfort to this simple fact:
We have been in trouble before . . . and we came through.
Acknowledgments
I enjoyed Nancy Milford’s biography Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay, which focused mostly on the first half of her life. The School of Medicine Basic Sciences and I join Edna in wishing all of you a happy U.S. Thanksgiving!