Conscientious Objector

“Conscientious Objector” by Edna St. Vincent Millay was published in her 1934 collection Wine from These Grapes, and later included in Collected Lyrics, which was first published in 1939. “Conscientious Objector” comes rather late in Millay’s publishing career, which spanned from 1909 to 1950, and has been published in posthumous collections, as well. Different publications change the line breaks in Millay’s poem. Some publications break Millay’s poem into twenty-four short lines, while in other publications, the poem is broken into thirteen long lines. This guide follows the latter structure of 13 lines, which appears in the 1981 Harper & Row paperback edition of Collected Lyrics (originally edited by Millay herself).

In all versions, the poem is written in free-verse. It is informed by the politics of the interwar period (between World War I and World War II). Millay was a pacifist for most of her life, and “Conscientious Objector” reflects on war as an untimely cause of death. In the poem, death is anthropomorphized (characterized as human). Millay reflects on the inevitability of mortality—that all humans will die—and recasts being loyal to the living as a kind of nationalism.

Poet Biography

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892 and lived in Union until her parents divorced. She then lived with her mother, Cora, and two sisters in Rockport and Camden. Millay learned piano, wrote poetry, and acted in school plays as a child and teenager. She was the editor of her school magazine, The Megunticook, and won a prize for her poem “La Joie de Vivre” in 1909.

Before entering college, Millay gained notoriety for her poem “Renascence.” The publication of this poem led to gaining a benefactress, Miss Dow, who aided Millay with finances and applying for scholarships for college. In 1913, Millay began taking courses at Barnard and later transferred to Vassar. After graduating in 1917, Millay moved to Greenwich Village in New York and lived with her sister Norma. There, Millay acted in and directed plays, including the anti-war Aria da Capo. She also wrote magazine articles using the pseudonym Nancy Boyd, and published poetry. In New York, Millay had romantic relationships with both men and women, including Floyd Dell—a socialist who obstructed the war effort—and poet and Army major Arthur Davison Ficke.

In 1921, Millay had an assignment from Vanity Fair that took her to Europe and away from a marriage proposal (that she rejected) from editor August Wilson. She visited Paris, Rome, Vienna, and Budapest. She stayed in England with her mother for a while, and they returned to the U.S. in 1923. In 1924, Millay married Dutch businessman Eugen Jan Boissevain. They moved to the Berkshires and established a farm called Steepletop, which is now a historic landmark.

Millay was known for her poetry readings, arranged by Boissevain, as well as her poetry collections. A Few Figs From Thistles was influential in the 1920s, and The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver won the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. Boissevain died in 1949, and Millay died in 1950.

Poem Text

Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Conscientious Objector.” 1934. Bactra, a site run by Professor Cosma Rohilla Shalizi

Summary

“Conscientious Objector” is a free-verse poem of 13 lines broken into four stanzas. Most of the lines are rather long, but the poem’s last line is the shortest, with six syllables. Millay uses the first-person perspective (indicated by the pronoun “I”) and focuses on a human-like (anthropomorphic) figure of death.

The first stanza contains one line. The speaker asserts they will not do anything on death’s behalf except die.

The second stanza contains four lines. The speaker hears death preparing to travel by horse. They describe the sounds of death in the barn. Then, they turn to listing locations where death will travel for business this busy morning: Cuba and the Balkans. However, the speaker refuses to aid death in preparing the horse’s bridle or mounting the horse.

The third stanza contains three lines. The speaker now asserts how they will not help death find a fox nor a boy with dark skin. Even if death harms the speaker with a whip or the horse’s hoof, they will not work for death. They repeat that all they will do for death is die.

The fourth stanza contains five lines. The speaker continues to list people they will not help death locate: friends, enemies, or—in the end—any person. They refuse to draw maps or spy for death, no matter how much money death offers. At the end, the speaker addresses their brother. They assure him that they will not grant death entrance to the city, and will not work with death to overcome him.