Song of a Second April

“Song of a Second April” was written by the 20th-century American dramatist, poet, and sometimes actress Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem was originally published in Millay’s third poetry collection Second April in 1921. With a simple and traditional poetic structure, “Song of a Second April” methodically portrays the changing of the seasons, the revival of nature after winter, the passing of time, and the cycle of life for both human beings and nature. However, lingering behind Millay’s depiction of the changes brought about by spring is a sense of loss and personal dissatisfaction that overshadows even the beauty of springtime.

Although Millay’s legacy as a poet diminished near the end of her lifetime and she was largely forgotten in subsequent decades, she was one of the most critically lauded and explosively popular poets of her time. From the initial publication of her poem “Renascence” in 1912 to the publication of her poetry collection Huntsman, What Quarry? in 1939, Millay experienced tremendous critical and popular success, selling thousands of copies of her many poetry collections even during the Great Depression. Her popularity was especially strong with women, and future poets like Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton would freely cite Millay’s influence on their own poetics. At the peak of her popularity, Millay was one of the greatest writing celebrities of the early-20th century. The famous English novelist Thomas Hardy once described the skyscraper and Millay’s poetry as the only great “cultural artifacts” America ever produced (Thurman, Judith. “Siren Songs.” The New Yorker, 26 Aug. 2001), echoing the general critical sentiment of the era that Millay was a poetic prodigy.

Poet Biography

Born in 1892 and raised in Camden, Maine, Millay was the oldest of Cora Lounella Buzelle and Henry Tolman Millay’s three daughters. The two separated while Millay was still a child, and, because her mother frequently worked away from home as a visiting nurse, Millay created imaginary friends and wrote to cope with her lonely childhood. Despite constant financial struggles, Millay’s mother provided her daughters with opportunities to enhance their education, exposing them to a variety of literature and enrolling them in music lessons. As a child, Millay read extensively from poets like Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, and Tennyson, and it was the Romantic and Victorian poets that would become her greatest influence. Encouraged by her mother, Millay began writing novels and poetry as early as eight years old.

During her teenage years, Millay composed and even published several poems. In 1906, she published the Keats-inspired poem “Forest Trees” in the St. Nicholas Magazine at 14 years old. Within the next four years, she published an additional five poems for the magazine, and at 16, she presented dozens of her own poems, grouped together as “The Poetical Works of Vincent Millay,” to her mother. Around this time, Millay also became an accomplished pianist, performing compositions for a local musician when she was only 13, as well as a promising actress at the Camden Opera House. However, Millay primarily devoted herself to writing poetry, and it was her prodigious poetic skill that would make Millay internationally famous at just 20 years old.

Millay’s first taste of fame occurred in 1912 when her mother stumbled upon a contest for the annual poetry anthology The Lyric Year. Millay submitted a few poems, including her long poem “Renascence,” which portrayed the complicated relationship between human beings, nature, and death. Although Millay controversially did not win the prize for first place, “Renascence” received instant critical acclaim when it appeared in the anthology later that year. The poem achieved such celebrity that a rich benefactor paid Millay’s tuition so she could attend college and cultivate her poetic talent. Millay enrolled at Vassar College in New York, where she earned her lifelong reputation as one of the era’s progressive, sexually liberated “New Women.” As a student, Millay famously and openly had relationships with both men and women, and she composed several poems about her sexuality. By the time she graduated in 1917, Millay had already published a dozen poems in Mitchell Kennerly’s literary magazine Forum. Kennerly also published Millay’s first poetry collection Renascence and Other Poems that same year.

The debut of this first poetry volume “launched” Millay “on a rushing current of acclaim” (McClatchy, J. D. “Feeding on Havoc: The Poetics of Edna St. Vincent Millay,” The American Scholar, vol. 72, no. 2, 2003, p. 45). After graduation, Millay moved to New York City, where she gave poetry readings, performed on stage in Greenwich Village, entangled herself in numerous love affairs—most notably with fellow poet Arthur Davison Ficke who inspired many poems in Second April—, and, of course, continued writing. Millay adopted the pseudonym Nancy Boyd, under which she produced numerous short stories for pulp magazines Ainslee’s and Metropolitan, making pennies per word.

In 1919, shortly after moving to New York City, Millay entered her most prolific period. She wrote many of the poems that would be compiled in Second April and The Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems, and she also wrote her experimental, anti-war drama Aria Da Capo, which was performed in theaters later that year. Showings of the play all sold out, and Millay’s drama was an immediate critical and commercial success.

In 1920, more of Millay’s poetry debuted in the magazine Vanity Fair, and Millay also published her second poetry collection A Few Figs from Thistles. Unlike Renascence and Other Poems, A Few Figs from Thistles was met with mixed reviews, with many critics dismissing its flippant, rebellious, and “immature” attitude towards serious subject matter. Despite this criticism, certain poems from the collection, particularly “First Fig,” quickly became emblematic of the era and Millay’s growing celebrity. The next year, while vacationing in France, Millay published her third poetry collection, the far more serious and elegiac Second April, as well as the plays Two Slatterns and a King and The Lamp and the Bell.

In the two years spent abroad, Millay did not write much poetry, but she did publish The Harp-Weaver, and Other Poems, which she dedicated to her mother. The collection’s titular poem about maternal self-sacrifice and its many other moving ballads earned Millay even greater critical acclaim, and the poetry volume won Millay a Pulitzer Prize. The collection was eagerly embraced by women in particular, who saw The Harp-Weaver as a representation of changing social roles for women. During these two years in France, Millay became increasingly ill, so she returned to New York in 1923, where she married the newspaper owner Eugen Jan Boissevain, who took care of her medical expenses.

While the period of Millay’s greatest poetic output had concluded, she still published several different works. In 1925, suffering from severe headaches and vision loss, Millay wrote The King’s Henchman, a blank verse libretto commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. Published as a book, the libretto was a huge success and had 18 printings in less than a year. As she grew more involved in social causes, Millay published the popular poetry collection The Buck in the Snow, and Other Poems (1928), which expressed much of her frustration and mounting political disillusionment.

During the latter half of the 1920s, Millay’s time was largely devoted to her marriage, moving house, and travel, as she went on various reading tours. These readings continued for years, and in 1928, she met poet George Dillon while on tour. The two began an affair that continued for a couple years and inspired the collection of love sonnets in Millay’s Fatal Interview (1931). Within a few months, the volume sold over 50,000 copies. After 1932, in addition to reading tours, Millay also began performing nationwide radio broadcasts in which she read her poems.

The 1930s were in many ways the end of Millay’s poetic career. She did publish the poetry collections Wine from These Grapes (1934) and Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939), the latter of which sold 60,000 copies in a month. However, Millay was plagued by misfortune during the latter half of the decade. In 1936, a fire consumed the manuscript of her unfinished Conversation at Midnight, and a dangerous car accident left her injured and addicted to pain killers for many years. When the Second World War began in 1939, Millay abandoned her usual style of poetry and wholeheartedly embraced writing propaganda, much of which she compiled in Make Bright the Arrows: 1940 Notebook. After years of writing propaganda, Millay experienced a mental health crisis in 1944 and did not write poetry again for several years.

Shortly after her husband died in 1949, Millay was hospitalized for alcohol and drug use disorders. She finally began writing poetry again a month later, but during a night of heavy drinking, she fell down her staircase, breaking her neck. Millay died in 1950, at 58 years old. Her final volume of poetry, Mine the Harvest (1954), was published posthumously.

Poem Text

April this year, not otherwise

Than April of a year ago,

Is full of whispers, full of sighs,

Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;

Hepaticas that pleased you so

Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,

And shingles lie about the doors;

In orchards near and far away

The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;

The men are merry at their chores,

And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,

Noisy and swift the small brooks run

Among the mullein stalks the sheep

Go up the hillside in the sun,

Pensively,—only you are gone,

You that alone I cared to keep.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “Song of a Second April.” 1921. Academy of American Poets.

Summary

Millay begins “Song of a Second April” with the speaker’s acknowledgment that the April of “this year” (Line 1) is “not otherwise” (Line 1) or is the same as the April “of a year ago” (Line 2). Both Aprils are “full of whispers” and “sighs” (Line 3) for the speaker, and both are full of “dazzling mud” and “dingy snow” (Line 4) in their weather. The speaker observes that the hepatica flowers that “pleased” (Line 5) the poem’s mysterious recipient are “here again” (Line 6) with the coming of the new season, as are creatures like “butterflies” (Line 6).

In the second stanza, the speaker shifts focus away from the natural changes brought about by spring and highlights the changes in human behavior instead. The speaker describes the sound of “hammering” that “rings […] all day” (Line 7) and the sight of shingles lying near houses’ doors (Line 8), indirectly describing the roofing repairs people are doing after the damage caused by winter’s snow. Just as “men are merry at their chores” (Line 11) and are resuming life as usual, the natural world is also busy. In addition to the returning butterflies, there is also “[t]he grey wood-pecker [who] taps and bores” (Line 10) into the trees of orchards both “near and far away” (Line 9). In the middle of this busyness from humans and animals alike, children eagerly welcome the spring and play together in “earnest” (Line 12).

The third and final stanza returns to observations of the natural changes of spring. Millay’s speaker notes the streams that “run still and deep” (Line 13) and the brooks that run “[n]oisy and swift” (Line 14). Beside these bodies of water are “mullein stalks” (Line 15), or herbaceous plants, that sheep graze from as they wander “up the hillside in the sun” (Line 16). In the final two lines, however, the speaker abruptly changes tone and ignores this idyllic scene and once again references the poem’s addressee. The speaker laments that “only” this mysterious figure is “gone” (Line 17). This person “alone” (Line 18) was the only thing the speaker “cared to keep” (Line 18) but did not return with the coming of April.