Four Sonnets: IV
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem “IV” is the last of a sequence of four sonnets. It first appeared on 29 April 1920 in the literary journal “Reedy’s Mirror”, and subsequently was included in Millay’s 1922 collection “A Few Figs from Thistles”.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on 22 February 1892 in Rockland, Maine, US, and she died on 19 October 1950 in Austerlitz, New York, US, at the age of 58.Poet and playwright, Millay was a renowned social figure and noted feminist in New York City during the Roaring Twenties and beyond. She wrote much of her prose and verse under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd. Winning the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for her poem “Ballad of the Harp-Weaver”, she was the first woman and second person to win the award. Highly regarded in her lifetime, she was described by critic Edmund Wilson as “one of the only poets writing in English in our time who have attained to anything like the stature of great literary figures”.
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I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far, — Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking.