Sonnet no. 3 (Edna St Vincent Millay)

But I must admit, I have fallen for Four Sonnets from the mentioned 1922 collection, and especially for the sonnet no. 3. I must also admit that, as I’m writing this, I’m still very much affected by this poem. I read it as a declaration of a free-spirited woman of her love for an equally free-spirited man, or better else – to liberate ourselves of any gender connotations – a declaration of a free-spirited individual to their soulmate. I am aware that the words Millay uses to describe the object of her affection – ‘wanton’, ‘light’, ‘false’, ‘more changeful than the tide’ – do not exactly conjure an image of a nice, reliable person. But Millay projects herself as ‘faithful to love’s self alone’ and asserts that she would desert her beloved and seek another with the same ease – a hardly better image. Yet she’s not to do so because they challenge each other, their freedom constantly makes them rediscover themselves and one other, and their love for freedom ultimately binds them together.

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save for love’s self alone.
Were you not lovely, I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you still not my hunger’s rarest food
And water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you – think not, but I would! –
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,
Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most faithless when I most am true.