It was a coin toss to put this here or in "Relationships". "Poetry" won, but I do want to include Spoken Verse's commentary, which is almost as provocative as the sonnet itself.
Think not I am Faithful<![CDATA[<span data-s9e-mediaembed="youtube" style="display:inline-block;width:100%;max-width:640px"><span style="display:block;overflow:hidden;position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%"><iframe allowfullscreen="" loading="lazy" scrolling="no" style="background:url(https://i.ytimg.com/vi/K_QNo-ckM4M/hqdefault.jpg) 50% 50% / cover;border:0;height:100%;left:0;position:absolute;width:100%" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/K_QNo-ckM4M"></iframe></span></span><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/K_QNo-ckM4M&hl=en_US&fs=1&" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" class="bbc_link bbc_flash_disabled new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/K_QNo-ckM4M&hl=en_US&fs=1&</a>]]>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_QNo-ckM4MThe text:
THINK NOT I AM FAITHFUL
by: Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
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.
SC's Commentary:
Edna, who sometimes preferred to be called Vincent, was enamoured with the concept of "free love". Free Love is a misnomer because the term usually means the most costly kind of love: costly because it inflicts the most harm and provides the least valuable returns.
The idea of being in love with love where you can find it rather than entering into a mutually committed exclusive relationship is more attractive to the young, who can easily find a new relationship when they've ruined the old one by being selfish and unfaithful.
She is right that vows are worthless (unless they relate to a code of morality, such as wedding vows, but even then they are only as strong as that code.)
You can't trust a lover's promises because as soon as they get annoyed with you they will deliberately break them. The only person you can trust is one who has high standards of integrity. You can guess what their standards are from how they have behaved in the past. Whatever happened with their last lover will probably happen with you.
This sonnet expresses the idea that she won't need other lovers because she had found a lover who is so changeable and fickle that they supply her need for variety. Of course, like most love poetry, it's not much more than spurious advertising for pretty falsehood. When poets promise undying fidelity or say that, "love is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is not shaken", they are more concerned about their lover straying - which motivates them to write a poem expressing lofty ideals in an attempt to prevent that eventuality. It probably won't work because, for one thing, by then it's too late. Three months later they'll be saying similar things to somebody else.
Or perhaps it's just me that's cynical about it.
Edna's critics would say that she did nothing new, nothing in the way of technical innovation, which is the hallmark of genius. However, they invented that standard of measurement. If the poet's job is " to tell you what it's like to be me" then Edna did that very well and most memorably. Why should it be a criterion of poetic genius that they break new ground?
~"Tom OBedlam"
