“Figs from Thistles” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1918)

The first section of this work, “First Fig,” became a Bohemian anthem for its time: “My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night: / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— / It gives a lovely light!”

“Renascence” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1917)

This is the poem that brought Millay to the poetry-reading public’s attention. It is not a sonnet but a long series of rhyming couplets. The word renascence means the revival of something dormant. Metaphorically and in her personal history, it indicates the birth and/or awakening of Millay as a professional poet.

“Sonnet 130” by William Shakespeare (1609)

Millay’s work is in conversation with this sonnet by Shakespeare not only in form but in tone. Shakespeare’s poem resists traditional ideas of romantic devotion with what appears to be clear-eyed pragmatism while still adhering to an intensity of romantic feeling.

“Sonnets from the Portuguese 35: If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850)

This poem, written between 1845 and 1846, is an example of a Petrarchan sonnet, a fourteen-line poem composed of an eight-line stanza with the rhyming pattern abba abba followed by a six-line stanza with a rhyming pattern of cdcdcd or cdecde.