and now a word or two from Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She was 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. Poet Richard Wilbur asserts: "She wrote some of the best sonnets of the century."

Journey


AH, could I lay me down in this long grass


And close my eyes, and let the quite wind


Blow over me--I am so tired, so tired


Of passing pleasant places! All my life,


Following Care along the dusty road,


Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;


Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand


Tugged ever, as I passed. All my life long


Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;


And now I would fain lie in this long grass


And close my eyes.


Yet Onward!


Cat-birds call


Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk


Are gutteral. Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,


Drawing the twilight close about their throats.


Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines


Go up the r7ocks and wait; flushed apple-trees


Pause in their dance and break the ring for me;


Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern


And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread


Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant,


Look back and beckon ere they dissappear.


Only my heart, only my heat responds.


Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side


All through the dragging day,--sharp underfoot


And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs--


But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,


And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,


The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,


Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road;


A gateless garden, and an open path;


My feet to follow, and my heart to behold.



Edna St. Vincent Millay said:

The young are so old, they are born with their fingers crossed.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

What the customer demands is last year's model, cheaper. To find out what the customer needs you have to understand what the customer is doing as well as he understands it. Then you build what he needs and you educate him to the fact that he needs it.

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

Millay’s career and celebrity began in 1912 when she entered her poem “Renascence” into a poetry contest in The Lyric Year. The poem was so widely considered the best submission, that when it was ultimately placed fourth, it was quite the scandal for which Millay received much publicity. The first place winner, Orrick Johns, was among those who felt that “Renascence” was the best poem in the volume, and stated that “the award was as much an embarrassment to me as a triumph." One of the second prize winners even offered her his $250 prize money. In the immediate aftermath of The Lyric Year controversy, a wealthy woman named Caroline B. Dow heard Millay reciting her poetry and playing the piano at the Whitehall Inn in Camden, Maine, and was so impressed that she offered to pay for Millay’s education at Vassar College. She graduated in 1917.

My wife’s Great, Great Aunt was a very well known Professor of Physics at Vassar College. Her name was Frances G. Wick. She published a vast amount of writing relating to radium and X-rays etc. She was the Physics Professor of Edna St. Vincent Millet. The following line is from her memories, passed down through my wife’s family.

In Professor Wick’s class, she was asked a physics question on a test, the following is the legendary answer, “I don’t know and I wish I were dead!”