The Romanticism of Edna St. Vincent Millay: "For unremembered lads. . ."

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

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.

 

 

Millay's genius was to condense the essence of Romanticism into sonnet form. She was a peerless sonneteer. -- DL

Comments

[Angela Ball]

David, you are so right. This sonnet always breaks my heart. And heals it again.

[Ken Lauter]

David,

I probably re-read Millay as often as any poet in the canon and am put in increasing awe of her genius each time I do. Her voice is so insistent.

And yes, she does indeed "condense the essence of Romanticism" and perhaps even something more than that-- maybe at some deep level actually REDEFINING the Romantic ethos into a form compatible with modernity (a function that I fancy I see in Frost at times, and frequently in Stevens.)