Edna St. Vincent Millay

To a Poet That Died Young

Minstrel, what have you to do
With this man that after you
Sharing not your happy fate,

Tennyson, the Laureate

Alfred Tennyson became Poet Laureate in 1850 and held the position for 42 years until his death at 83. Millay is contrasting him with poets who died young.

Sat at England's Laureate?
Vainly in these iron days

Iron vs. Golden

"Iron days" suggests a harsh modern age, contrasted with the golden age of Romantic poetry. Millay wrote this in 1921, after World War I.

Strives the poet in your praise,
Minstrel, by whose singing side
Beauty walked, until you died.
Still, though none should hark again,
Drones the blue-fly in the pane,
Thickly crusts the blackest moss,
Blows the rose its musk across,
Floats the boat that is forgot

Tennyson's 'Lady of Shalott'

Direct reference to Tennyson's famous poem about a doomed lady whose boat floats to Camelot. The boat still floats whether anyone remembers the poem or not.

None the less to Camelot.
Many a bard's untimely death
Lends unto his verses breath;
Here's a song was never sung:
Growing old is dying young.

The Paradox Core

This is the poem's thesis: the conventional wisdom is backwards. Dying young preserves poetic purity; surviving into old age is the real death for a poet.

Minstrel, what is this to you:
That a man you never knew,
When your grave was fair and green,

Victoria and Tennyson

Tennyson was close to Queen Victoria, visiting her regularly after Prince Albert's death. "Gossiped" diminishes what should be an honor—chatting with royalty becomes trivia.

Sat and gossiped with a queen?
Thalia knows how rare a thing

Muse of Comedy

Thalia, one of the nine Muses, presided over comedy and pastoral poetry. Invoking her here adds ironic weight—even the Muse of light verse knows this truth.

Is it, to grow old and sing.
When the brown and tepid tide
Closes in on every side;

Shelley's Death at 29

Percy Bysshe Shelley drowned at 29, his reputation intact. Millay asks whether his golden verse would have tarnished if he'd lived to Tennyson's age.

Who shall say if Shelley's gold
Had withered it to grow old?
The New RepublicEdna St. Vincent Millay
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Young Dead vs. Tennyson

This poem stages a debate between two models of poetic success. In one corner: the Romantic poets who died young (Keats at 25, Shelley at 29, Byron at 36). In the other: Alfred Tennyson, who became Poet Laureate at 41 and lived to 83, growing increasingly conservative and Victorian.

Millay sides decisively with the dead. The "minstrel" she addresses—the generic young dead poet—had "Beauty" walk beside him until death. Tennyson, by contrast, lived into "iron days" where poetry struggles. The word "vainly" does double duty: Tennyson's praise of the young poet is both futile (the dead can't hear it) and vain (self-serving, since Tennyson's own survival looks worse by comparison).

The poem's central paradox arrives at line 18: "Growing old is dying young." For a poet, aging is the real death—a slow decline into respectability, compromise, and irrelevance. Physical death at the height of one's powers preserves the work in amber. Millay asks about Shelley's "gold"—would his verse have "withered" if he'd grown old? The question implies its answer.

CONTEXT Millay wrote this in 1921, at age 29—the same age Shelley drowned. She was acutely aware of the Romantic mythology around young death. Within a decade, she'd win the Pulitzer Prize and face her own version of the dilemma: how to age as a poet without dying artistically.

What Survives Neglect

The second stanza offers a surprising answer to what endures. Even if "none should hark again"—if no one listens to poetry anymore—the natural world continues its cycles. The blue-fly drones, moss crusts, roses bloom, and Tennyson's boat floats to Camelot whether anyone reads "The Lady of Shalott" or not.

This passage cuts two ways. On one hand, it's consoling: poetry exists independent of audience, like nature itself. The boat floats "none the less"—regardless of fame or forgetting. On the other hand, it's devastating: poetry might be as indifferent to human concerns as moss and flies. The blue-fly "drones"—both buzzes and recites monotonously, a pun that collapses insect and bad poet.

Millay's imagery here is deliberately unglamorous. Not nightingales or skylarks (the Romantic birds), but a blue-fly in a window. Not fresh growth but "blackest moss" that "crusts." The rose "blows its musk across"—scatters its scent wastefully, to no audience. These are images of beauty persisting in neglect, which is either the poet's triumph or irrelevance, depending on your perspective.