Millay’s Figs

Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote two short poems, “First Fig” and “Second Fig,” which are both often quoted as was the case of “First Fig” by Heath Ledger’s father on the death of his son.

First Fig
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. 

The poem is little more than applying a cliche to the carpe diem theme. Most interesting is the speaker’s addressing both her foes and her friends. Why must her enemies know of the frenetic but exhilarating “lovely light,” her life’s burning up? So that they will envy her, living well being the most delicious revenge.

What about her friends? They have played a part in her passion play, and she tells them that it’s okay - that a short but sweet life has been “lovely.” No regrets.

Somewhere along the way emotional and psychological “burnout” has become fashionable - even sought after. The brief, spent, wasted lives of celebrities are romanticized. Audiences, friends and foes, can’t get their fill of the “lovely life.” Millay knew this having lived allegedly as a promiscuous bisexual in an era when such behaviors were kept private. Two lengthy biographies of the poet, born in 1892, were published a couple of years ago.

Also from her A Few Figs From Thistles (1922) collection is “Second Fig,” a darker poem taking its imagery from an allusion to Jesus’ parable of the wise man who, able to plan ahead and arm himself against trouble, builds his “house” or life on a solid foundation, the rock. He is contrasted to the foolish man, who builds upon the infirm, shifting sand.

Here’s Millay’s take”

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! 

The speaker is clearly familiar with and even understands the parable’s lesson, but shuns it in favor of the flash of her “shining palace” while fully knowing its instability and hence its danger. And as in First Fig, she involves others: “Come and see,” she beckons. This is the darker side of the carpe diem philosophy.

 

Frost’s ambiguity and the importance of titles

Do they still make students memorize Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken?” If not, at least the poem is still included in most antholgies. Courses in American literature usually deem Frost a very rural, pro-American, voice of democracy, voice of the people kind of poet. He is that. But there is much more. More brillance.

His deliberate ambiguity is easily overlooked, and yet therein lies the heart of his work.  Without it “The Road Not Taken” is another good poem with a common theme:  There was this dilemma. I had a difficult choice to make.  I made it.  The poem shares this theme with “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” (. . . and miles to go before I sleep.)

The speaker describes a pleasant wooded pathway that forks. Both paths have advantages.  They are equally “fair” or desirable. In fact, he is “sorry” that he cannot take both.  But a choice must be made, and he chooses one path over the other thinking that maybe some day . . . but no, he knows he’ll never return to the rejected path.

The last stanza gives enough subtle evidence that perhaps the choice was not the better one.  The speaker’s telling the story with a sigh implies an uncomfortable nostalgia. Sighs usually do. And, too, he’s still wondering about his choice in the hyperbolic “ages and ages hence.” He took the less-frequented road and, yes, that choice made all the difference. Now when most use the phrase “made all the difference” it means for the better. Our poet is not so obvious. He leaves enough clues to make us examine his poem more closely and to wonder why that one-time choice is still on his mind years later and why he still sighs when he remembers.  Regret?

Finally, always go back to a poem’s title. It is not “The Road Taken.” The subject of this insightful poem is “The Road NOT Taken” and that makes all the difference.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.