SOURCE: Epstein, Daniel Mark. “Renascence.” In What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, pp. 49-67. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.

In the following excerpt, Epstein describes the emotional and erotic context of Millay's poem.

In September of 1911 she had written, “There is no time, no distance in my love. It is the supreme element. But it is too great to bear alone and the weight of it is crushing me. … I need your hand to cling to. … Oh, Sweetheart! How long will you leave me alone?”

By January 1912, in the icy grip of winter, she was terrified: “I am frightened. I do not know of what I am afraid. The thought of the universe makes me sick. It is dread that I feel, an intangible, fatalistic feeling. There is so little left of my winnowing on which to...