Intention to Escape from Him

1892 –

1950

I think I will learn some beautiful language, useless for commercial
Purposes, work hard at that.
I think I will learn the Latin name of every song-bird, not only in
     America but wherever they sing.
(Shun meditation, though; invite the controversial:
Is the world flat? Do bats eat cats?) By digging hard I might deflect 
     that river, my mind, that uncontrollable thing,
Turgid and yellow, strong to overflow its banks in spring, carrying 
     away bridges;
A bed of pebbles now, through which there trickles one clear
     narrow stream, following a course henceforth nefast—

Dig, dig; and if I come to ledges, blast.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Intention to Escape from Him" from Collected Poems. Copyright 1931, 1934, 1939, © 1958 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society. www.millay.org.

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

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 set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1931

[Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find]

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year’s roses in my breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1922

Sonnet III: “Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring”

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1917

Poems

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Intention to Escape from Him

More by this poet

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

[Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find]

Sonnet III: “Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring”

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