Upon this marble bust that is not I Lay the round, formal wreath that is not fame; But in the forum of my silenced cry Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame. I, that was proud and valiant, am no more; — Save as a dream that wanders wide and late, Save as a wind that rattles the stout door, Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate. The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust. Only my standard on a taken hill Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust And make immortal my adventurous will. Even now the silk is tugging at the staff: Take up the song; forget the epitaph.
To Inez Milholland
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Read in Washington, November eighteenth, 1923, at the unveiling of a statue of three leaders in the cause of Equal Rights for Women”. —Cosma's Homepage.
“Milholland was indeed a prominent figure in Millay's life, not only did Millay write a sonnet ‘To Inez Millholland’ in 1923 which was read at the unveiling of a statue for women's rights, but in the same year she married Milholland's widower Eugen Boissevain.” — Jade Craddock
Footnote 19 in Craddock's disseration, Women Poets, Feminism and The Sonnet In The Twentieth And Twenty-First Centuries: An American Narrative, Department of English College of Arts and Law, The University of Birmingham, April 2013.