Edna St. Vincent Millay Spring Analysis

Edna St. Vincent Millay once stated, “I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.” Millay was a poet in the early 1900s. She wrote numerous poems in which all a constant theme. Two of my favorite poems from her are Spring, which was written in 1921, and I Forgot for a Moment which was published in 1940. These two poems were written nineteen years apart, but Millay showed a thematic connection between them.

To begin with, her poem Spring showed readers her true thoughts on the season. During this poem she analyzed that a beautiful month like April, can still remind her of death. In line 9- 15 it stated, “ It is apparent that there is no death. But what does that signify? Not only under ground are the brains of men- Eaten by maggots. Life in itself- is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.” It appears that Millay thought life was a joke. There is no “apparent death.” I think that Millay was a woman surrounded by war and its

World War 2 was going on when she wrote this poem. Men were off fighting for this war. In this poem she states, “I lived for a moment in a world so lovely, so inept- [a]t twisted words and crooked deeds, it was as if I slept and dreamt.” The poem painted a scene of a perfect life. A reality versus a dream made Millay cope with what is going on. The meaning of this poem is about how Millay forgot about how beautiful the England and the world can be. This poem told readers for a future how bad World War 2 was for everybody. Millay may have been. I think the sense of being scared was apparent in her poem. Millay was hoping for a time without war. When I read this, I think she was thinking at the time what if? What if the world wasn’t at war? What if the tanks did not invade Holland? This poem shows her personal experience, something that I could not have