Renascence, and Other Poems

"Renascence" is a 1912 poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, credited with introducing her to the wider world, and often considered one of her finest poems. The poem is a 200+ line lyric poem, written in the first person, broadly encompassing the relationship of an individual to humanity and nature. The narrator is contemplating a vista from a mountaintop. Overwhelmed by nature, and thoughts of human suffering, the narrator empathetically feels the deaths of others, and feels pressed into a grave. Friendly rain brings the narrator back to joy in life-the rebirth, or "renascence", of the title.