His Memory

Among the prominent contemporary poetesses in American literature is Edna St. Vincent Millay. Born in 1892, she has been publishing her poetry continuously since 1912. She is counted among the most widely famous of American poets, and the reading public in her country prefers her to all her fellow poets.

Her poetry is distinguished by its vehemence, by its care for words and expressions, and by its portrayal of her personal states of soul on the one hand, and the aspects of her society on the other.

There is no consolation in time. You all lied when you told me that time would lighten my pains!
I miss him in the rivers of the rain,
and I need him at the ebbing of the tide.
See, the old snows are melting on the mountainsides,
and the aged leaves of the trees scatter into dust at the turnings of the road,
but it is the bitter love, the love of the year gone by, that remains encamped upon my heart, and my old thoughts are not effaced.
There are a hundred places I fear
to visit — for they brim with his memory.
And if I enter, at my ease, some quiet place his foot never trod, and where his face never shone,
I say: "He has no memories here!"
And I stand stricken — for by that very thought I have remembered him.