Love Poem Analysis - Aislinn Langley

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950

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

Vincent's sonnet addresses a paradoxical attitude in regard to love. Instead of stressing the importance of love, as many poets seek to do in sonnets, she points out its flaws and frivolity. The first quatrain of the sonnet outlines the idea that love is nonessential. She writes that "it is not meat nor drink / Nor slumber" or in any apparent way necessary to life. It isn't a "floating spar to men that sink" or a means or salvation or redemption. It is simply an emotion. Similarly, the second quatrain tackles the idea that love can more hurt a person than help. Love cannot "clean the blood" or "set the fractured bone" or physically mend a person, furthering the idea that there is no material benefit of it. Vincent describes how love or lack thereof causes "many a man [to make] friends with death" and is ultimately something that she "might be driven to sell" if it meant she could be free of any potential pain it would bring. By this point in the sonnet, it seems clear that Vincent views love as something illogical and unwise, but the final line reveals the true depth of her feeling. Despite all the reasons to set aside love in the name of self-preservation, she says "I do not think I would." She thus encapsulates the idea that love is dangerous and illogical and perhaps not in man's best interest, but we love in spite of all of this. Despite being "nagged by want past resolution's power," people love anyway. Vincent acknowledges that love is not all, but that doesn't make it any less moving.

I suppose I agree with her interpretation. It reads rather cynically at first, which is disheartening, but seeing that this cynical view isn't dissuading her from loving is touching and an idea I respect. I don't believe love is as essentially useless as the poet does, but the theme of not caring about the potential drawbacks of emotion resonates with me.

St. Vincent Millay, Edna. "Love is Not All" 1931. Literature and Composition. Comp. Carol Jago. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 675. Print.