Now I’d like to make the transition from love poetry to poetry about lost love. Here is another poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It is a sonnet devoted to the memory and pain of a lost love. Where her first poem, “Recuerdo,†was full of life and joy, this poem is full of sadness. In this poem, Edna is bold and almost angry. I love the way she begins, with a statement of defiance against the advice and encouragement of others who had tried to relieve her pain. It is a sonnet, which means that it has a very specific rhyme scheme. The first 8 lines rhyme with one another, while the last 6 rhyme in pairs. If that’s confusing, just wait, you’ll figure it out. So… without further ado, her sonnet:
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and how my old thoughts abide!
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, — so full of his memory they brim!
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, ‘There is no memory of him here!’
And so stand stricken, so remembering of him!
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The depth of feeling of this poem is extraordinary, taking us on a journey first from anger, then to reminiscence, to fear, and at last to abject despair. I want to break it down in sections because there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that I don’t want you to miss. The poem begins with a bold declaration to friends and those who’ve tried to comfort her. But she doesn’t linger there for long. After only the first two lines of defiance against comfort, she quickly transitions to a tender reminiscence:
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
Here she tells of her bitterest moments; heightened all the more by those nostalgic settings, like staring out a rain-glazed window in early morning Spring, or walking along a quiet beach at sunset. The next four lines extend her beautiful imagery, and there’s a deep-seated meaning locked up inside them:
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and how my old thoughts abide!
Here, even though the whole world has changed and become renewed, still for her, the memory and pain are unchanged. The snow has melted, the leaves are gone, and yet… still she sees him in the weeping of the rain. Though the whole world has changed, the remembrance of her love cannot be effaced from the scenery around her. And at last the feeling of the poem transitions to fear. Knowing that time has not brought relief, and knowing of the constant reminders of her loss, she comes to a place of despair, culminated by the last two lines, in which the memory of her loss has not only entrenched itself in all the places where once they were happily in love – now the memory is beginning to take over everywhere else as well.
