What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply;
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands a lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet know its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone;
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
About Edna St. Vincent Millay
One of the finest poets of the twentieth century, and almost certainly the best writer of sonnets, Edna St. Vincent Millay won the Pulitzer Price for Poetry for her 1922 collection, The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver. In addition to the title poem (one of Millay's best regarded), this anthology featured Sonnet 42, "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why," first published in 1920 in Vanity Fair. Using the most traditional of poetical forms, the sonnet, Millay crafts an evocative verse of longing and liberation.
Although many of her poems seem aggressively modern to us, Millay grew up in the age of great Victorian poets and writers. Her sentiments and verse were radical for their time, but she received praise from the lights of her day. The great novelist Thomas Hardy said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.