Vincent Millay

Many things be dead and gone That were brave and gay; For the sake of these things I will learn to say, "An it please you, gentle sirs," "Alack!" and "Well-a-day!" This blog is run by blogs sdreyfus and the-world-is-my-book

[xshayarsha]

Before this moon shall darken, say of me: She’s in her grave, or where she wants to be.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from Collected Sonnets. (via xshayarsha)

[xshayarsha]

your last touch– A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself As saintly—hallows now each simple thing

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from Interim. (via xshayarsha)

[violentwavesofemotion-deactivat]

Fervour, devotion, fright, audacity.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from The Collected Poems; “When it is Over,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

[missmillay]

Vincent’s Favorite Poems #5

“Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart         And come, for some uncertain moments lent.         Man were immortal and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.                Thou messenger of sympathies,                That wax and wane in lovers' eyes; Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,                Like darkness to a dying flame!                Depart not as thy shadow came,                Depart not—lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.“

from Percy Bysshe Shelley “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”

[missmillay]

Vincent’s Favorite Poems #4

“Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

from Percy Bysshe Shelly “Ode to the West Wind”

[missmillay]

Vincent’s Favorite Poems #3

“So done, upon the nymph his eyes he bent, Full of adoring tears and blandishment, And towards her stept: she, like a moon in wane, Faded before him, cower’d, nor could restrain Her fearful sobs, self-folding like a flower That faints into itself at evening hour: But the God fostering her chilled hand, She felt the warmth, her eyelids open’d bland, And, like new flowers at morning song of bees, Bloom’d, and gave up her honey to the lees. Into the green-recessed woods they flew; Nor grew they pale, as mortal lovers do.” from John Keats “Lamia”

[missmillay]

Vincent’s Favorite Poems #2

“She hurried at his words, beset with fears,       For there were sleeping dragons all around,       At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—       Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.—       In all the house was heard no human sound.       A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door;       The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,       Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. “

from John Keats “The Eve of St. Agnes”

[missmillay]

Vincent’s Favorite Poems #1

“For early didst thou leave the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without,     Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,     Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.          O life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,     Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,     And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.“

from Matthew Arnold’s “The Scholar-Gipsy”

[missmillay]

“Well, toodle-oo. I must button up my organdy and go out and dance around the May-Pole; with a sprig of mistletoe in one hand and a snowball in the other; singing dirty songs, like Ophelia.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

[missmillay]

“Anyway, I have them all now. And what evil thing can ever again brush me with its wings?”

(About learning the following poems by heart: Matthew Arnold’s “Scholar Gypsy”, Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes” and “Lamia”, and Shelley’s “To the West Wind” and “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”)

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they'll make your soul impervious to the world's soft decay.”   --Janet Fitch, White Oleander

[missmillay]

”My heart’s friend;--if only I could be with you now, this afternoon, just for the length of time it takes to drink three cups of tea, quietly, saying hardly anything—”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

[missmillay]

“Now it is a matter of record that I never received higher than a C minus in arithmetic.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

[missmillay]

“It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another—it’s one damn thing over & over—there’s the rub—first you get sick—then you get sicker—then you get not quite so sick—then you get hardly sick at all—then you get a little sicker—then you get a lot sicker—then you get not quite so sick—oh, hell.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

[missmillay]

Said the little Lord Jesus to the little Lord Buddha, “The world is getting ruder and ruder.” Said the little Lord Buddha to the little Lord Jesus, They’re only doing it to tease us.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

[missmillay]

“No one can ever take your place with me. We know each other in such a terrible, certain, windless way. You and I have almost achieved that which is never achieved: we sit in each other’s souls.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

[missmillay]

“As ever, the companion of your middle age, the friend of your declining years, the old woman who’ll sit before the fire with you fifty years from now and knit the left stocking while you knit the right.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay from a letter to her sister Norma Millay Ellis

[missmillay]

“You were the first man I ever kissed without first thinking that I should be sorry about it afterwards.”

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay