Wednesday 8 June 2011

Poetic Ponders (9)

Thanks to the lovely Sara Jay for this beautiful button.

During this year studying English Literature and Creative Writing, I’ve developed a new appreciation for poetry. With this in mind, I thought that I’d start a new weekly feature on So Many Books, So Little Time in which I share with you my favourite poems. They may be ones I discover on my course or ones I’ve loved for a long time.

Hopefully some of you will join me in sharing some awesome poems.

Love Is Not All – Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.

I discovered this poem in my favourite way: through a book. Gayle Forman’s Where She Went is introduced with the second half of this sonnet and I loved them so much that I had to look the whole thing up! It fits that book so perfectly, too.
Sophie

2 comments:

  1. I love poetry,and this is a gorgeous one. Thank you for sharing. This is the first time I've heard of it!

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  2. I truly loved this poem & am thrilled to have come across your blogspot tonight.

    ReplyDelete

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