Born in Rockland, Maine in 1892, Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of three sisters, and had been gifted with the talent to write. When growing up she was an avid reader of St. Nicholas magazine, and it was through that magazine that Millay first found her welcome as a poet (Perkins, 708). At the age of nineteen, Millay had written what is considered her first major poem, "Renascence." It was this piece of writing that won her a scholarship to Vassar College, and it was there that Millay refined her natural skills and provided her with a significant source of culture and scholarly wisdom, including much of the feminist and political sensibilities that surfaced in her later work (Napierkowski, 79). In 1917, the year Millay graduated from Vassar, her first book, Renascence and Other Poems was published. Upon graduation she packed up her things and went to Greenwich Village, New York (Perkins, 708). This area was noted as a haven for people of artistic skills as well as a center for issues of women's rights and free love (both of which Millay espoused) (Napierkowski, 79). While in Greenwich Village, she kept herself busy with writing poetry and performing w

"Thou Art Not Lovelier Than Lilacs" consists of two stanzas made up of fourteen lines. The first stanza is comprised of lines one through eight. In this stanza, the persona is comparing a person who she has feelings for to beauty. It is evident that the persona is confused and cannot seem to get away from this person she speaks of. She has some sense of a relationship with the person because of her use of the word "thou," which is only used to refer to people that one knows very well. Although the persona may know this person well and have some type of relationship with him, she does not know what to think of it. The second stanza, which is made up of lines nine through fourteen, compares beauty to poison. The persona tells of how taking little bits of poison can eventually lead to an immunity, so when a fatal dose is taken, she would survive it and have no symptoms. This connects to beauty, because by becoming use to only having small amounts of beauty, the persona realizes that she must look on the inside of people and judge them from that, because looks are truly not everything, and she knows that.

"Thou Art Not Lovelier Than Lilacs," written by Edna St. Vincent Millay, is a very moving poem and can be quite relatable to life. The persona within this poem is in great conflict with herself because she does not know how to feel for the person she speaks of. This person is not beautiful, but according to the poem, one cannot judge by looks. The persona can deal with the fact that this person is not good-looking, because she knows that beauty is not everything. However, she just cannot decide what to do because she obviously has feelings towards this person, but she just does not know how to interpret them and what to do with them.

ith the Provincetown Players. However, she led a busy and fast paced life, and Millay eventually could not take it anymore, and with that, she left for Europe and stayed there for two years where she made her income by writing articles under the pseudonym Nancy Boyd (Napierkowski, 79). By 1923, Millay had returned to New York once again, and ended up meeting a man by the name of Eugen Boissevain. Within the same year Millay and Boissevain were married. Boissevain was Millay's ideological and spiritual partner and the two were perfect for each other. Not only did Millay get married in 1923, she also won the Pulitzer Prize

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Approximate Word count = 1609
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)