Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 – 1950
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.
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Wow! Just, wow! Am I right? Love is funny. We feel it so deeply and personally that we are sure no one else can understand or experience that one special thread that is unique to us.
BUT, if that were so, we wouldn't find such solace in the myriad songs about loss. And there are so, so many. Millions upon millions of words in poetry about love found, love destroyed, love made, love lost... we understand them all. Love and its ancillary feelings... we are all there.
So Edna Millay's Love Is Not All strikes a chord. What we think love will be, what it truly is, but ultimately, what we all hope it proves in the end.
Discuss...