My Favorite Poems: Two Sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, Being Born A Woman and Distressed

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.'

 XLVI from Fatal Interview

Even in the moment of our earliest kiss, 
When sighed the straitened bud into the flower, 
Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this; 
And that I knew, though not the day and hour. 
Too season-wise am I, being country-bred, 
To tilt at autumn or defy the frost: 
Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did, 
I say with them, "What's out tonight is lost."
 I only hoped, with the mild hope of all
Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree, 
A fairer summer and a later fall
Than in these parts a man is apt to see, 
And sunny clusters ripened for the wine: 
I tell you this across the blackened vine.

Millay. I love her. I binged on her poetry this past summer, and absolutely fell in love with these two in particular. I feel like she manages to cover most relationships in the course of her sonnets. These two are my favorites because I have SEEN these. I've felt the latter; that was my last relationship. I've seen the former in Lord knows how many of my friends' relationships.