Heart, Have No Pity... (Sonnet 29 from Fatal Interview)

HEART, have no pity on this house of bone:
Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy.
No man holds mortgage on it; it is your own;
To give, to sell at auction, to destroy.
When you are blind to moonlight on the bed,
When you are deaf to gravel on the pane,
Shall quavering caution from this house instead
Cluck forth at summer mischief in the lane?
All that delightful youth forbears to spend
Molestful age inherits, and the ground
Will have us; therefore, while we're young, my friend--
The Latin's vulgar, but the advice is sound.
Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here
For age to invest in compromise and fear.

(From "Fatal Interview")

This poem from Fatal Interview is a bittersweet one. In it Vincent proclaims that she wants to live every moment without reserve while she is young and not try to maintain her body for when she is older. I love that she addresses the heart here, and my favorite line is "Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy."

The bitter part is that Vincent did die fairly young, and very shortly after the love of her life, Eugen, died. She loved and lived brightly and with all of her heart and her life was short. She did indeed burn her "candle at both ends" and it did not last the night. But the light was brilliant indeed.

Love Is Not All (Fatal Interview Sonnet XXX)

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 cannot 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 may well 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 may well be. I do not think I would.

(From "Fatal Interview" 1931)

This sonnet is fairly well known, probably because it is so accessible and easy to remember. The verse structure makes it a classic sonnet but the content makes it classic Millay. The first part of the poem is often said to be the objective part while the second half is the introspective portion, but knowing what we know about this set of poetry and how it was written largely about her affair with Dillon, it is easy to see that the entire poem is very personal.

The first line is an excellent hook, it pulls the reader in with a general statement of truth. She draws pictures of how love cannot save the lives of people who are ill but reminds us that without love we can suffer greatly as well. Then she uses herself as an example of this fact and asks if there is anything that could force her to give away the feeling of the love they share, or the memory of this night together. She concludes, in her humanizing way, that it is possible. But not likely.

Millay knew how precious love was, and in this little sonnet, with its quaint rhymes and imagery, she reminds us to cherish our loves as well.

Fatal Interview Sonnet XI - "Not In A Silver Casket"

Sonnet XI

Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to you.
Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion and the legend plain-
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the open hand, no thing but that,
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,
I bring you, calling out as children do:
"Look what I have! - And these are all for you."

(From "Fatal Interview" 1931)

I was reminded of this poem by a comment on "No Lack of Counsel," a poem I posted in March. These two sonnets are similar, as the commenter noted, in their depiction of a woman who is honest about her intentions and emotions, even though she knows that her honesty puts her at a disadvantage in her attempts to charm the man she loves.

Millay was indeed intoxicated with her attraction to Dillon, and this poem strikes me as remarkable in its dedication to simple beauty in the midst of such a turbulent affair. It almost sounds as if it was written for Boissevain, and perhaps it was, but it appears in the middle of a book of sonnets written for Dillon.

She begins by saying what she is not doing, and it may help to know that red corundum is ruby and blue is sapphire. Her love is not locked away as others might, or dependent on a ring to keep a vow. She is giving her love freely, though she knows that is risky, as she writes in "No Lack of Counsel." I admire her ability to love so freely. She had suffered many losses and heartbreaks, as her earlier poetry makes clear, and yet she loved without reservation still. It is a lesson and an inspiration and I'm so grateful that such a soulful person was also such a talented poet.

Rendezvous

Rendezvous

Not for these lovely blooms that prank your chambers did I come. Indeed,
I could have loved you better in the dark;
That is to say, in rooms less bright with roses, rooms more casual, less aware
Of History in the wings about to enter with benevolent air
On ponderous tiptoe, at the cue, "Proceed."
Not that I like the ash-trays over-crowded and the place in a mess,
Or the monastic cubicle too unctuously austere and stark,
But partly that these formal garlands for our Eighth Street Aphrodite are a bit too Greek,
And partly that to make the poor walls rich with our unaided loveliness
Would have been more chic.
Yet here I am, having told you of my quarrel with the taxi-driver over a line of Milton, and you laugh; and you are you, none other.
Your laughter pelts my skin with small delicious blows.
But I am perverse: I wish you had not scrubbed--with pumice, I suppose--
The tobacco stains from your beautiful fingers. And I wish I did not feel like your mother.

(From "Huntsman, What Quarry?" 1939)

This poem was running through my head last night but I'm not entirely sure why. Perhaps it is Vincent's declaration that she "could have loved you better in the dark" and her quick correction of herself to show that she merely means that the room is overly decorated. And perhaps it is the simply perfect expression she uses when she says "you are you, none other" and adds a line about laughter that surprises me in its elegance.

In retrospect, perhaps I was trying to work out exactly what Vincent was talking about when she says she was quarreling with a taxi driver "over a line of Milton." I had always thought it was some antiquated expression for money or a place she was trying to go but now I think that Vincent, ever the intellectual as well as the poet, was actually arguing with the driver of her taxi over what the exact phrasing was of a line from one of Milton's poems! Now that would be an interesting story.

And the story of this poem is interesting. She sent it to Dillon with a large collection of other poems but this was the one he published in his magazine, the only one he seemed to like completely. Perhaps it is his odd taste to refuse rhyme in place of casual verse, or perhaps it just seemed the most fitting description of how things really were between the two of them.

Fatal Interview - Sonnet III "No Lack of Counsel"

No lack of counsel from the shrewd and wise
How love may be acquired and how conserved
Warrants this laying bare before your eyes
My needle to your north abruptly swerved;
If I would hold you, I must hide my fears
Lest you be wanton, lead you to believe
My compass to another quarter veers,
Little surrender, lavishly receive.
But being like my mother the brown earth
Fervent and full of gifts and free from guile,
Liefer would I you loved me for my worth,
Though you should love me but a little while,
Than for a philtre any doll can brew, —
Though thus I bound you as I long to do.

(From "Fatal Interview" 1931)

This is the third sonnet in the Fatal Interview set, and it sets the tone early on for how her relationship with Dillon went. I love the compass metaphor and her declaration that she would rather be loved for her who she really is.

"Whereas At Morning" Fatal Interview - Sonnet 24

Whereas at morning in a Jeweled Crown
I bit my fingers and was hard to please,
Having shook disaster till the fruit fell down
I feel tonight more happy and at ease:
Feet running in the corridors, men quick—
Buckling their sword-belts, bumping down the stair,
Challenge, and rattling bridge-chain, and the click
Of hooves on pavement—this will clear the air.
Private this chamber as it has not been
In many a month of muffled hours; almost,
Lulled by the uproar, I could lie serene
And sleep, until all's won, until all's lost,
And the door's opened and the issue shown,
And I walk forth Hell's Mistress—or my own.

(From "Fatal Interview" 1931)


This has been one of my favorite "Fatal Interview" sonnets since I first found Millay many years ago. Her medieval metaphor encompasses the entire poem here, and yet she still manages to make it a parable, not a just a story. Not a line of the poem steps outside the bounds of the scene she has set, yet we can tell she isn't really talking about a castle and a battle - she is talking about her relationship with Dillon.

This poem makes more sense in the context of Fatal Interview, as it is situated after a poem condeming falsehood and directly before a poem that likens desire to a dangerous walk in the woods at night. While the former poem is a decision not to lie and the latter is a description of the risk she has taken, the poem in the middle is an examination of her actions. It is more active than reflective, and it reminds me of poem 22 (two sonnets before this one) that begins "Now by this moon, before this moon shall wane/I shall be dead or I shall be with you!" The resemblance to the last line of this poem "And I walk forth Hell's Mistress—or my own" is clear. She has made a demand and awaits an answer that will either move her relationship forward or end it. It is bold, and somewhat feminist, and most of all it is excellent poetry.

"Night Is My Sister" From Fatal Interview

Night is my sister, and how deep in love,
How drowned in love and weedily washed ashore,
There to be fretted by the drag and shove
At the tide's edge, I lie - these things and more:
Whose arm alone between me and the sand,
Whose voice alone, whose pitiful breath brought near,
Could thaw these nostrils and unlock this hand,
She could advise you, should you care to hear.
Small chance, however, in a storm so black,
A man will leave his friendly fire and snug
For a drowned woman's sake, and bring her back
To drip and scatter shells upon the rug.
No one but night, with tears on her dark face,
Watches beside me in this windy place.

(From "Fatal Interview" 1931)

I love this poem. It sounds desperate, it's heavy on dark metaphor and it goes out of its way to rhyme, but I love it. There is something so loud and real about this poem, like hearing the sound of your own heartbeat in a pitch black room. I love the imagery of scattering shells on the rug in front of the fire. I can see the sand in her hair, smell the seaweed and hear the shells hitting the floor.

This is another sonnet from Fatal Interview, which means it is another sonnet about Dillon. Millay's turbulent relationship with him was terrible for her, but great for her poetry, and this poem is an excellent example of that. She describes herself as sad, pathetic, drowning in love with no hope of comfort - but she does so beautifully.

Now By The Path I Climbed

Now by the path I climbed, I journey back.
The oaks have grown; I have been long away.
Talking with me your memory and your lack
I now descend into a milder day;
Stripped of your love, unburdened of my hope,
Descend the path I mounted from the plain;
Yet steeper than I fancied seems the slope
And stonier, now that I go down again.
Warm falls the dusk; the clanking of a bell
Faintly ascends upon this heavier air;
I do recall those grassy pastures well:
In early spring they drove the cattle there.
And close at hand should be a shelter, too,
From which the mountain peaks are not in view.

(From Fatal Interview)

Fatal Interview is an extensive series of sonnets Millay wrote about her turbulent affair with George Dillon. This sonnet is found in the second half of the collection, so it makes sense that here is speaking about the end of the passionate relationship she had with Dillon. The metaphor of descending from a hill in the springtime is a descriptive one, and I love the alteration between metaphor and reality. This is especially apparent in the lines "Talking with me your memory and your lack/I now descend into a milder day" where in the first line she refers to the loss of her lover and in the second casts the scene of walking down a mountain into milder weather. Although she undoubtedly loved Dillon, he was not the love of her life, and in fact her affair with him occurred during her marriage to the man she loved most, Eugen Jan Boissevain.

I plan on sharing many more sonnets from this Fatal Interview, as there are some of Millay's most descriptive and passionate work, but I always find it interesting to keep in mind that the person who inspired these poems was but a turbulent season in a life full of many loves.