101 Poems, Number 5

Favorite Poems Throughout My Life

5: “Sonnet XIII” (“Read history”), from Mine the Harvest (1949), by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950)*

“But what a shining animal

Is man,” Millay here writes

In this, a famous sonnet that

Achieves a sonnet’s heights.

So many other species can’t

Begin to know of death,

Of future suffering and pain—

Can’t dread a final breath.

But we all know what lies ahead—

And yet, somehow, we still

Enjoy our lives—repress the fear—

Enjoy each mortal thrill.

*final lines used as an epigraph for Judith Guest’s Ordinary People, 1976; film in 1980, dir. Robert Redford

Link to poem (scroll down to #13).