Collected Poems

Edna St. Vincent Millay

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780062015273
• eBook ISBN: 9780062124012
• Subtopic: Literary Essays

“One of the greatest American poets of her time.”—New York Times

Collected Poems features Edna St. Vincent Millay’s incisive and impassioned poetry and sonnets, as well as the poet’s last volume, Mine the Harvest, compiled and published in 1956 by her sister Norma Millay. Alongside Robert Frost, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, and E. E. Cummings, Millay remains among the most celebrated poets of the early twentieth century for her uniquely lyrical explorations of love, individuality, and artistic expression.

Millay, winner in 1923 of the second annual Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, was a daring, versatile writer whose work includes plays, essays, short stories, and songs. She infused new life into traditional poetic forms, bringing hope to a generation of youth disillusioned by the political and social upheaval of the First World War. She ventured fearlessly beyond familiar poetic subjects to tackle political injustice, social discrimination, and women’s sexuality in her poems and prose.

Yet Millay’s poetry is still decisively modern in its message, and it continues to resonate with readers facing personal and moral issues that defy the test of time: romantic love, loss, betrayal, compassion for one another, social equality, patriotism, and the stewardship of the natural world.

This invaluable compendium of her work is not only an essential addition to any collection of the world’s most moving and memorable poetry but an unprecedented look into the life of Millay.

My candle burns at both ends;

  It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

  It gives a lovely light!

“First Fig” from A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Foreword

From Renascence

Renascence

Interim

The Suicide

God’s World

Afternoon on a Hill

Sorrow

Tavern

Ashes of Life

The Little Ghost

Kin to Sorrow

Three Songs of Shattering

I. The first rose on my rose-tree

II. Let the little birds sing

III. All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree

The Shroud

The Dream

Indifference

Witch-Wife

Blight

When the Year Grows Old

From Second April

Spring

City Trees

The Blue-Flag in the Bog

Journey

Eel-Grass

Elegy Before Death

The Bean-Stalk

Weeds

Passer Mortuus Est

Pastoral

Assault

Travel

Low-Tide

Song of a Second April

Rosemary

The Poet and His Book

Alms

Inland

To a Poet that Died Young

Wraith

Ebb

Elaine

Burial

Mariposa

The Little Hill

Doubt No More that Oberon

Lament

Exiled

The Death of Autumn

Ode to Silence

Memorial to D.C.

I. Epitaph

II. Prayer to Persephone

III. Chorus

IV. Dirge

V. Elegy

Wild Swans

From A Few Figs from Thistles

First Fig

Second Fig

Recuerdo

Thursday

To the Not Impossible Him

Macdougal Street

The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge

She Is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• From Renascence
• From Second April
• From A Few Figs from Thistles
• From The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
• From The Buck in the Snow
• From Poems Selected for Young People
• From Wine from These Grapes
• From Huntsman, What Quarry?
• From Make Bright the Arrows
• Poems which have not appeared in any of the previous volumes
• From Mine the Harvest
• Sonnets From Renascence
• From A Few Figs from Thistles
• From Second April
• From The Harp-Weaver
• From The Buck in the Snow
• Fatal Interview
• From Wine from These Grapes
• From Huntsman, What Quarry?
• From Make Bright the Arrows
• From Wine from These Grapes
• From Mine the Harvest
• Index of Titles and First Lines
• Photos, Letters & More . . .
• Books by
• Copyright
• About the Publisher