What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
Originally published in The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923) by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Public domain.
Analysis
Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why” is a sonnet of haunting retrospection. The speaker, reflecting on her past loves, evokes both sensual memory and emotional vacancy. Her tone is neither bitter nor regretful, but elegiac — an acceptance of love’s passing and the loneliness left in its wake. The poem captures the fading of passion with the same quiet inevitability as the turning of seasons.
Memory, Desire, and the Passage of Time
Millay uses the metaphor of a ghostly rain to mirror the persistence of memory. Though she has forgotten the names and faces of her lovers, their absence lingers like spectral echoes “that tap and sigh / Upon the glass.” The sensual intimacy of the opening lines gives way to melancholy introspection. The speaker’s amnesia is not indifference but a symptom of time’s erosion — desire remembered only through the ache it leaves behind.
The Winter Tree as Self-Portrait
The volta (or turn) arrives in the ninth line, where Millay’s imagery shifts from night and ghosts to winter and the barren tree. The metaphor captures the essence of aging: a life once alive with music and motion now stands in silence, marked by what is gone. The tree’s ignorance of which birds have left parallels the speaker’s inability to recall her past lovers — she knows only that their absence has left her emptier.
Millay’s Modern Sonnet Form
Though Millay follows the Petrarchan sonnet structure, her voice is distinctly modern. The diction is plain yet charged with feeling; the rhythm is natural, conversational, and deeply human. She reclaims the sonnet from its male-dominated tradition, using it to express female desire and emotional authority. Her mastery lies in her ability to blend personal confession with universal resonance — the sense that all passion, no matter how intense, is transient.
The Poet’s Maturity and Emotional Restraint
By 1923, Millay’s early exuberance had matured into reflection. This sonnet reveals a poet no longer intoxicated by love’s immediacy but attuned to its aftermath. The closing line — “summer sang in me / A little while, that in me sings no more” — encapsulates her elegiac wisdom. Love, like summer, is brief; its beauty lies precisely in its impermanence.