Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright. She is best known for her sonnet “Love Is Not All,” which begins with the famous line, “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink.”
“Love Is Not All” is a poem about the pain of love and its inability to cure all ills. The speaker compares love to food and drink, saying that it cannot sustain us or quench our thirst. Instead, love is like a fire that burns everything it touches, including the lovers themselves.
Despite its painful effects, the speaker still believes that love is worth the risk. They compare love to death, saying that even though it may destroy us, we cannot help but be drawn to it. In the end, the speaker concludes that love is not all we need, but it is still a vital part of our lives.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright best known for her sonnet “Love Is Not All.” The poem is about the pain of love and how it can’t cure everything. Millay compares love to food and drink, explaining that just like them, love can’t sustain us or quench thirst. However, also like them, we are still attracted to love even though it might destroy us. The speaker concludes that love isn’t everything we need but it is still a big part of our lives.
Food, sleep, shelter, and air are the four fundamental necessities for human existence. Humans can’t live without them, but they exist in two different meanings? In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love Is Not All,” she states that while love isn’t everything to keep us alive, it is the most valuable thing in this world when compared to food, housing, or air.
Millay begins the poem by stating that love is not all: “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink”. She goes on to say that love cannot keep us warm at night or fill our bellies when we are hungry. In short, love cannot sustain us physically, but it can sustain us emotionally. Millay argues that love is worth more than these physical comforts because without love, we would be “half-gods”.
Half-gods are beings that are not quite human and not quite divine. They are incomplete beings that lack the ability to experience true emotions. Millay believes that without love, we would be condemned to this half-god state where we would never be able to experience the highs and lows of human emotions. Love is what makes us fully human and without it, we would be little more than robots going through the motions of life.
Millay argues that love is worth more than physical comforts because it is the one thing that can make us feel truly alive. Without love, life would be a “dull and endless grind”. Love is what gives our lives meaning and purpose. It is what makes us get up in the morning and face another day.
Even basic needs like food and water can’t compete with humans’ natural desire for love, as demonstrated by the poem’s construction and lexical choice. The topic of this poem is broken down and described via the use of structure, which aids in illustrating the author’s changing thought process throughout the poem.
Edna St. Vincent Millay uses the title, “Love is not all” to hint at the main theme before the poem has even begun. The title gives away that this poem will be about how love is not always butterflies and rainbows which allows readers to prepare for a more negative outlook on love.
The poem is written in iambic pentameter with each line having five sets of two beats where the emphasis is on the second beat of each set. This creates a consistent rhythm throughout which makes the poem easier to read. However, this also means that each line must rhyme with the line before it except for the last line which stands alone as its own stanza. The rhyming scheme used in “Love is not all” is ABABCDCD EFEFGG.
The first stanza starts off with the narrator talking about how love is not food or water which are both things necessary for human survival. Even though they are important, they cannot compare to the importance of love. The second stanza shifts gears a bit and talks about how love is also not the sun on a cold winter day. This stanza uses metaphors to show how love should be able to make someone feel warm even on the coldest of days.
The third stanza goes back to discussing more physical objects and how love is not a “rare and perfect pearl”. This could be interpreted as saying that love is not something that is hard to find and that it should be cherished. The fourth stanza changes the tone once again and starts to talk about how love is not always happy. It goes on to say how there are times when love is “bitter as death”.
This stanza shows how even though love can be amazing, it can also be really tough. The fifth and final stanza brings the poem full circle by going back to the idea that love is a physical need like food and water. However, this time the narrator says that without love, human beings would die.
This effectively brings the poem to a close and helps drive home the main point which is that love is essential for survival.
The organization aids in demonstrating how the author deconstructs love into components, then goes on to illustrate that while love is not essential for survival, it is critical for a person to truly live. In Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, many different elements necessary for survival are expressed: “meat” (line one), “drink” (line one), “sleep” (line two), and no matter what there isn’t a “roof against the rain.”
All of these things are important and Edna St. Vincent Millay is listing them in a very blunt way, which emphasizes how love is not something as practical as the other necessities for survival. However, Edna St. Vincent Millay also writes that love is “a world destroyed”(line three), emphasizing how love can be so powerful that it has the ability to completely destroy someone if it goes wrong.
Edna St. Vincent Millay then asks the question “Is love worth all this?” ( line four) and answers with a resounding “No”(line five). She writes that love is not worth the pain and suffering that it can cause, and that it is not worth going through all of the turmoil just for a chance at happiness. Edna St. Vincent Millay then goes on to say that love is not worth all of the things that she listed before, “meat”(line six), “drink” (line six), and “slumber”(line seven).
She emphasizes how love is not worth the basic necessities for survival, and that it is not worth anything practical. Edna St. Vincent Millay then finishes the poem with the line “Yet many a man would die ere he forgot”(line eight) which shows how, even though love is not all of these things, it is still something that people are willing to die for. They are willing to give up all of the practical things in their life, and even their life itself, for the chance at love. Edna St. Vincent Millay expresses how love is not all of these things, but it is still worth everything to some people.