{"id":49,"date":"2015-08-25T03:17:14","date_gmt":"2015-08-25T03:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/eng528f15\/?page_id=49"},"modified":"2015-08-25T03:17:14","modified_gmt":"2015-08-25T03:17:14","slug":"edna-st-vincent-millay","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/teaching.lfhanley.net\/eng528fa16\/texts\/edna-st-vincent-millay\/","title":{"rendered":"Edna St. Vincent Millay"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Love Is Not All” (1931)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
\nNor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
\nNor yet a floating spar to men that sink
\nAnd rise and sink and rise and sink again;
\nLove can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
\nNor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
\nYet many a man is making friends with death
\nEven as I speak, for lack of love alone.
\nIt well may be that in a difficult hour,
\nPinned down by pain and moaning for release,
\nOr nagged by want past resolution’s power,
\nI might be driven to sell your love for peace,
\nOr trade the memory of this night for food.
\nIt well may be. I do not think I would.<\/p>\n

“Here lies, and none mourn him” (1934)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here lies, and none to mourn him but the sea,
\nThat falls incessant on the empty shore,
\nMost various Man, cut down to spring no more;
\nBefore his prime, even in his infancy
\nCut down, and all the clamour that was he,
\nSilenced; and all the riveted pride he wore,
\nA rusted iron column whose tall core
\nThe rains have tunnelled like an aspen tree.
\nMan, doughty Man, what power has brought you
\nlow,
\nThat heaven itself in arms could not persuade
\nTo lay aside the lever and the spade
\nAnd be as dust among the dusts that blow?
\nWhence, whence the broadside? whose the heavy
\nblade? . . .
\nStrive not to speak, poor scattered mouth; I know.<\/p>\n

“His stalk the delphinium” (1939)<\/strong><\/p>\n

His stalk the dark delphinium
\nUnthorned into the tending hand
\nReleases. . . yet that hour will come. . .
\nAnd must, in such a spiny land.
\nThe sikly, powdery mignonette
\nBefore these gathering dews are gone
\nMay pierce me–does the rose regret
\nThe day she did her armour on?
\nIn that the foul supplants the fair,
\nThe coarse defeats the twice-refined,
\nIs food for thought, but not despair:
\nAll will be easier when the mind
\nTo meet the brutal age has grown
\nAn iron cortex of its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Love Is Not All” (1931) 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 And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor<\/p>\n