A Celebration of Women Writers

"O Think Not I Am Faithful" by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
From Millay, Edna St. Vincent. A Few Figs From Thistles   New York: Harper & Brothers, 1922. p. 38.

[Page 38] 

III

OH, THINK not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now:
After the feet of beauty fly my own.
Were you not still 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.

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Editor: Mary Mark Ockerbloom