Edna St. Vincent Millay → Έντνα Βίνσεντ Μιλέι

[spiros]

Edna St. Vincent Millay



Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright and the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She was also known for her unconventional, bohemian lifestyle and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work.
Edna St. Vincent Millay - Wikipedia

Love Is Not All

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.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

[dimace]

Well written esoteric poetry. The poetic apogee (Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.) is strategically placed into the middle of the poem, which technically is demanding. Another nice post from the board. 

[spiros]

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.  Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone.  They are gone to feed the roses.  Elegant and curled
Is the blossom.  Fragrant is the blossom.  I know.  But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know.  But I do not approve.  And I am not resigned.

[spiros]

First Fig (από το A few Figs From Thistles, 1920)

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.

Κι από τις δυο μεριές καίει το κερί μου· Τη νύχτα όλη δε θα μείνει· Αλλά ωχ, φίλοι μου, και αχ, εχθροί μου— Eίν’ όμορφο το φως που δίνει!

Edna St. Vincent Millay: «Ολίγα Σύκα Από τριβόλων» [66 χρόνια από τον θάνατό της] – Intellectum