“Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would noteIn 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....”

“How first you knew me in a book I wrote,How first you loved me for a written line”

“This book, when I am dead, will beA little faint perfume of me.People who knew me well will say,She really used to think that way.”

“Strange how few, After all’s said and done, the things that areOf moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! “I had you and I have you now no more.” There, there it dangles,—where’s the little truth That can for long keep footing under thatWhen its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look on paper! “I had you and I have you now no more.”

“I shall forget you presently, my dear (Sonnet IV) "I shall forget you presently, my dear,So make the most of this, your little day,Your little month, your little half a yearEre I forget, or die, or move away,And we are done forever; by and byI shall forget you, as I said, but now,If you entreat me with your loveliest lieI will protest you with my favorite vow.I would indeed that love were longer-lived,And vows were not so brittle as they are,But so it is, and nature has contrivedTo struggle on without a break thus far,—Whether or not we find what we are seekingIs idle, biologically speaking.— Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Selected Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay (Modern Library, 2001)”

“I will come back to you, I swear I will;And you will know me still.I shall be only a little tallerThan when I went.”

“To Those Without PityCruel of heart, lay down my song.Your reading eyes have done me wrong.Not for you was the pen bitten,And the mind wrung, and the song written.”