Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

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

And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea.

Night falls fast. Today is in the past. Blown from the dark hill hither to my door Three flakes, then four Arrive, then many more.

A Poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown-up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight?

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

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

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

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

Life isn't all beer and skittles; few of us have touched a skittle in years.

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

So up I got in anger, And took a book I had, And put a ribbon on my hair To please a passing lad. And, "One thing there's no getting by -- I've been a wicked girl," said I; But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad!

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

Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end!

You wrote me a beautiful letter, I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was. I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is of the nature of love... When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness; know that it is a proud surrender to You.

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.

Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare.

There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough.

Lord I do fear / Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.

I know I am but summer to your heart, And not the full four seasons of the year; And you must welcome from another part Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear. No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing; And I have loved you all too long and well To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring. Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes, I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums, That you may hail anew the bird and rose When I come back to you, as summer comes. Else will you seek, at some not distant time, Even your summer in another clime.

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace.

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

I saw and heard, and knew at last The How and Why of all things, past, and present, and forevermore.

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

One things there's no getting by, I've been a wicked girl, Says I... But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad !

There are a hundred places where I fear To go, --so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.

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.

I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere.

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

... but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight

Heap not on this mound roses that she loved so well; why bewilder her with roses that she cannot see or smell.

She is happy where she lies With the dust upon her eyes.

To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak.

Not poppy, nor mandrake, Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep, Which thou owest yesterday.

When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! "I had you and I have you now no more.

Guess I'll weep awhile. Guess I won't, I mean.

But she was not made for any man, and she will never be all mine.

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied Who told me time would ease me of my pain! I miss him in the weeping of the rain; I want him at the shrinking of the tide; The old snows melt from every mountain-side, And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane; But last year's bitter loving must remain Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide! There are a hundred places where I fear To go,--so with his memory they brim! And entering with relief some quiet place Where never fell his foot or shone his face I say, 'There is no memory of him here!' And so stand stricken, so remembering him!

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.

I will come back to you, I swear I will; And you will know me still. I shall be only a little taller Than when I went.

Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note In me a beauty that was never mine, How first you knew me in a book I wrote, How first you loved me for a written line.

And what are you that, missing you, I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that’s a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man in my mind? Yet women’s ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,— And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well?

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

Man has never been the same since God died.

Beauty is whatever gives joy.

That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.

Night falls fast. Today is in the past.