"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. I do not think I would." --Edna St. Vincent Millay, "Love Is Not All" (Sonnet 30)
You can sort of see the ending of this poem coming from the start--you realize that it probably will turn its back on its title. The real tension (filled with a kind of anticipatory pleasure) is finding out how it will happen. And that line does it so effortlessly. (Makes me think of this song/post, too.)
Listen to a nice reading here.
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