101 Poems, Number 99

Favorite Poems Throughout My Life

99: “Renascence,” 1917, by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)

A recent one I’ve memorized—

The longest, too—and I’m surprised:

I’m older now (to say the least)

And things adhere as if they’re greased.

Two hundred fourteen lines of verse!

It took me months—could it be worse?

I learned it just to please my wife,

Who changed my world, my view, my life.

She’d learned it many years ago—

And so I followed (somewhat slow

Am I). But now it’s there—in my head

Where it will live till I am … (you know—rhymes with head).

Rebirth is what the poem’s about—

The title tells us (little doubt!).

We read about a kind of death—

And then return of soul and breath.

Millay was in her twenties when

She wrote the thing with her sure pen.

And now it is a friend I phone

When I lie quietly alone.

Link to poem.