Edna St. Vincent Millay

"I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me."

"I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast;So subtly is the fume of life designed,To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again."

"I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death."

"I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year."

"A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down."

"A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him."

"Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall."

"Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sun That will not rise again. Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea,Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charity That lifts a man a little above the beasts that run. That this could be!That I should live to see Most vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown,So fitted out with purple robe and crown To stand among his betters! Face to face With outraged me in this once holy place,Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and hunted Truth was harboured out of danger,He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger!I would have sworn, indeed I swore it:The hills may shift, the waters may decline,Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it,But never your love from me, your hand from mine. Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under. Farewell, sweet light, great wonder!You, too, farewell,-but fare not well enough to dream You have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came."

"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..."

"TO what purpose, April, do you return again? Beauty is not enough. You can no longer quiet me with the redness Of little leaves opening stickily. I know what I know. The sun is hot on my neck as I observe The spikes of the crocus. The smell of the earth is good. It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots. Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, April Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers."

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

"Listen, children:Your father is dead. From his old coats I'll make you little jackets;I'll make you little trousers From his old pants. There'll be in his pockets Things he used to put there,Keys and pennies Covered with tobacco;Dan shall have the pennies To save in his bank;Anne shall have the keys To make a pretty noise with. Life must go on,Though good men die;Anne, eat your breakfast;Dan, take your medicine;Life must go on;I forget just why."

"Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely."

"Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;In my own way, and with my full consent. Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely Went to their deaths more proud than this one went. Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping I will confess; but that's permitted me;Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free. If I had loved you less or played you slyly I might have held you for a summer more,But at the cost of words I value highly,And no such summer as the one before. Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,I shall have only good to say of you."

"Music, my rampart and my only one."

"What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lain Under my head till morning, but the rain Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh Upon the glass and listen for reply,And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain For unremembered lads that not again Will turn to me at midnight with a cry. Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:I cannot say what loves have come and gone,I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more."

"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"