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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Edna St. Vincent Millay
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from https://www.rd.com/list/love-poems/
“I know I am but summer to your heart (Sonnet XXVII)” by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) was a feminist ahead of her time, and many of her poems unabashedly explore female desire and subvert the male gaze. In “Sonnet XXVII,” however, the narrator paints herself as summer, a brief relationship that will soon be replaced by the other seasons, as the narrator recognizes that she cannot be everything for her lover. While this is technically a breakup poem, it’s a complex one in which affection still lingers, but the narrator chooses to leave the relationship for now, with dignity and love for herself.
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