Millay Vs. Shakespeare: Love, Loss and Lament

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why” is an effective short poem, which feeds on the dissonance between the ideal of love and its reality, heartbreak. In William Shakespeare’s “Let Me Not to The Marriage of True Minds,” the effectiveness is weakened by its idealiality and metaphysical stereotype. In contrast to Millay, Shakespeare paints a genuine portrait of what love should be but unfortunately never really is. This factor is what makes his poem difficult to relate to, thus weakening the effect on the reader. These poems were published quite far apart from each other, three-hundred and fourteen years to be exact, which might explain the shift in idealism. Though both circumnavigate the concept of love, the effect left within both writers based on personal affairs dramatically differentiates the personas of both speakers.

In Millay’s poem “ What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where and Why” she laments over lost lovers. Ironically, she is described as both fondly remembering and regretfully forgetting them. In the second and third lines, the speaker recalls the lips and arms, of the young men, that have embraced her in the past, rather than their faces, suggesting her ignorance of their identities or names. She continues, “the rain is full of ghosts tonight.” (3-4) In this octave she uses raindrops hitting a windowpane to stand for the sighs of lost lovers. She also compares raindrops to ghosts as a metaphor for memories of lost lovers, whose absence she feels, though who have faded into a vague abyss. In this comparison, she also uses the windowpane to show the separation between the present and past, or a border which allows insight but not interference. She is able to look back at her past but not change anything she has done thus she can only reminisce and unfortunately only regret. She describes “a quiet pain” (6) in her heart “for unremembered lads” (6-7) emphasizing her loneliness and sorrow caused by these meaningless trysts. In the sestet Millay compares herself to a “lonely tree,” (9) “with birds vanishing one by one” (10) and “boughs more silent than before.” (11) The tree is an analogy for her lost chances at true love. The lack of leaves and singing birds on the boughs of the trees stand for the loss of youth and lovers. In the last few lines of the poem Millay’s character realizes that nobody young desires the her, now that she has aged. Her chances at love have now been diminished and her sorrow, too overpowering for her to move forward. We see that Millay never tries to answer the “where, and why” (1) questions she asked in the beginning of the poem to prove them irrelevant, it is surely quality not quantity which she has so regretfully missed out on. Overall, Millay not only reveals but admits that she desired and enjoyed, rather than loved the young men who were her lovers, passing from one to the other forgetfully.

(3)In William Shakespeare’s “Let Me Not to The Marriage of True Minds,” rather than base his thoughts in the inconsistency of love, or the heartbreaks, he concentrates on the apex or constancy of it. He compares its constancy with a fixed star, which glimmers and “looks on tempests,” (6) overlooking storms and remaining undisturbed or “never shaken.” (6) This star refers to mariners at sea, which relied on these seamarks or beacons for navigation and safe bearings. The star acts both as a metaphor of love and its constancy, as well as a guide pushing the voyagers through their journeys. and hardships; analogous to the journey and inevitable hardships of love. Further on in the poem he describes love as “not Time’s fool,” though the charms of youth “the bending sickle’s compass come.” (10) Despite the arc of the Grim Reaper's sickle, love itself does not decay or crumble nor does it base itself with the passage of hours and weeks. True love should be timeless. Shakespeare attempts to provide an understanding of what so many people search for but hardly ever find. Instead they get involved in relationships that eventually fail and it's all because they don't really understand what love actually means. To refer to the beginning of the poem, Shakespeare begins with “Let me not ....admit,” (1) denying that anything can ever come between true lovers or act as an impediment to their love. Love or “the marriage of true minds” (1) does not weaken when the circumstances given rise to it are changed or “alter when it alteration finds.” (3)

It is certainly implied that both of these poems are concerned with the ideal of true love, but we have seen that they differ quite dramatically with the authors’ mindset and themes which they are attempting to portray. Both poems revolve around the consistency of love, whether existent or not, though their discrepancies are valid, it is these discrepancies, which provide