This poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay is a contemplation on the limitations of love. Over 14 lines of iambic pentameter, the speaker argues that love cannot fulfill basic human needs like food, shelter, or health. However, she acknowledges that many still risk death due to a lack of love. The speaker then considers scenarios where she might trade away her own love for relief from suffering. In the end, though, she decides she likely would not abandon love even in difficult times.

1. Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)
Edna St. Vincent Millay - 1892-1950

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

3. Background
• Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine, on
February 22, 1892.
• A poet and playwright.
• Poetry collections include The Ballad of the Harp-
Weaver (Flying Cloud Press, 1922),
• Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and Renascence and Other
Poems (Harper, 1917)
• She died on October 18, 1950, in Austerlitz, New York.

4. Structure
• Love Is Not All, also referred to as Sonnet XXX, is a
traditional Shakespearean sonnet.
• It has fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.
• It consists of three quatrains and a couplet at the end.

5. Summary:
1. This poem is a contemplation by the speaker on all the ways in which
humans suffer for love.
2. Millay begins by stating all the things that love is not, all the physical
ways it cannot help someone in need of food, shelter, water, or sleep.
3. She continues on to write about how love cannot cure disease “nor set
the fractured bone.”
4. Despite these things, she writes, men still physically and mentally kill
themselves for love.
5. The poem takes a turn at this point to the first person in which the
speaker contemplates selling her own love to save herself from a variety
of fates.
6. In the last line the speaker comes to the conclusion that she may trade
her love away, but more than likely she, as all those stated above, would
not.

6. Title:
• “Love is not all” summarizes the first half of the poem.

7. Line 1 - 2
1. Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
2. Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Millay states that “Love is not all;” it is not, she continues, either
meat or drink. It is also neither, “slumber nor a roof against the
rain.” These are things that are critical to human survival, shelter,
sleep, food, and water. They plainly contrast with the emotion of
love, something that Millay is hoping to call attention to. She is
attempting to lessen loves importance by comparing to things
one physically cannot live without.

8. 3. Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
4. And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Continuing on to the second half of the first quatrain, Millay creates
another metaphor, or a comparison between two unlikely elements. In
this instance Millay is once again comparing love to something
physically critical to human survival, a “spar.” A spar is a strong pole
that is used as a mast of a ship. In this comparison, it is something a
man on a sinking ship would want desperately as a way to reinforce
his damaged vessel. Love would do him little good at this critical
moment. The next line is a repetition of the motions of a drowning man
as he sinks below the surface only to rise up again and sink once
more.

9. • Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
• Millay continues the comparison at the end of the first quatrain
as she speaks here of death and the little good love will have in
stopping it. In this case the “thicken[ing] [of] lung.” This could
refer once again to drowning or more likely to tuberculosis. This
second theory is reinforced by the first half of the next line:

10. • Nor clean the blood,
• It is well known that when one is afflicted with tuberculosis the
lungs can begin to fill with blood and during the 1930’s TB was
much more prevalent than it is today. This makes it a likely
disease for Millay to have chosen to contrast against love.
• nor set the fractured bone;
• She makes one last comparison in this quatrain, describing how
love cannot set the fractured bone.

11. • In general, with these metaphors, she is attempting to get
across the notion that love is nothing but an emotion that can do
nothing for one in a critical, life threatening situation.
• This is the turning point of the sonnet, or volta. A volta is a vital
point in almost all sonnets in which many things can happen.
The transition from one speaker to another, a change in opinion,
or in this case, a change in perspective. After this point, the
speaker starts using first person to address the issue more
personally.

12. • Yet many a man is making friends with death
• Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
• In these lines, Millay references all the comparisons above, and
her speaker is saying, basically, that even with all the truths that
have thus far been stated, men still kill themselves because
they do not have love. This line is written with a kind of disbelief
as if the speaker has a hard time understanding how this could
possibly be the case. The next quatrain and final couplet are
single idea contemplated by the speaker on what she might do
in various situations if she had love and could give it away to
save herself or assuage some kind of pain.

13. 1. It well may be that in a difficult hour,
2. Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Here the speaker begins to list possible scenarios in which she
might be willing to, give away “your love for peace,” as she states
in the last line of the final quatrain. These two scenarios mirror
the ones the speaker has described in the first half of the poem,
a difficult hour without food, water, or shelter, and pinned down by
pain as if afflicted with a deadly disease such as tuberculosis was
then.

14. • Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
• I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
• In this line the speaker remembers her life before the start of
this love she is ruminating on. She remembers the decisions
she used to make and the resolution, or determination, that they
had. One may infer that now, at least to the speaker, her
decisions are weaker, influenced by love’s sway or the stronger
will of her partner.

15. 1. Or trade the memory of this night for food.
The final comparison comes in the first line of the couplet in
which the speaker considers “trading the memory” of one
particularly special night for food, These are all things, the
speaker contemplates, she may be willing to sell her love to gain,
or regain.

16. • It well may be. I do not think I would.
• The final line of the poem is the conclusion of all of this
contemplation and consideration. She considers once more that
she may “sell your love,” but concludes that, even with all her
rational arguments throughout the sonnet, she does not think
she would. This final turn in the last line of the poem shows the
speaker to be just as fallible and subject to the control love
places over one’s decisions as all those she formally
references.

17. References
• https://poets.org/poem/love-not-all-sonnet-xxx
• https://poemanalysis.com/edna-st-vincent-millay/love-is-not-all/