herd the saying "better love and loss than have never loved at all"?

Question

with this poem (look at first and last lines specifly) Is Millay trying to opposite the above saying- Does she mean to say, "It is not better to have loved and loss than to have ever loved at all?" Is she saying that she rather die than give love up her love for someone? please read...


Sonnet 30
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. But I do not think I would.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Answer 1

Okay, it's reeeally early in the morning here, so bear with me.

Yes.

Compare to The Beatles "Can't buy me Love"

Same sort of drift here initially.

You can't survive on love. (i.e. shelter, food, save a drowning man etc.)

But many die without it.

In the end, Ms. Millay treasures her memories of Love's moment above all else. Power, food, peace.

...basically.

oop. Coffee's up. Good luck. :)

Answer 2

I'd give the 10 to ladybird but have some thoughts I'll share, trying not to steal hers.

Edna lists, even tongue in cheek, those things, so many feel are "needs", usually thought of in a survival sense, while admitting that Love isn't one of them.

"Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all",,, isn't what I get from this at all, unless LOST is the defining word for the writers LIFE,,,NOT any LOVE they feel,,and very strongly express in the end. She states, in the last line, that the love the writer, or person of subject in the piece feels, is not something they are willing to sell, trade off, in spite of the fact that survival is unlikely, no matter.

The quote refers to losing a love, once felt, as opposed to never having felt that emotion. It's pretty obvious that's not the case for the writer.

Steven Wolf

Answer 3

This brilliant woman is a master of understatement. She is praising love beyond all the things that she says that love is NOT! And the last six lines are the most powerful of all. In these lines, she is saying that, even if she were dying, in extreme pain or hunger, she would not trade her love for relief. So, what do you think? Is she saying it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all? I think she's saying that , and a whole lot more besides!

Answer 4

Yes, she's saying it's better to have loved & lost than never to have loved. Though love isn't food or shelter, it is a basic necessity, without it we would die. She would not trade her love, even for food if she was starving, even for peace if she was in pain. She's sort of tenuous about it though. She doesn't say definitively, just that she doesn't "think" she would trade love for anything. She's trying to play it cool, to downplay the strength of her love, yet it still comes across.

Answer 5

I think it is saying that it is better to have experienced love than never to have known of it.

Answer 6

it means that is better to have loved someone at some stage of your life then not to have lloved at all