"I drink- and live- what has destroyed some men"

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As I lay at home all day recovering from my wisdom extraction (I survived!) I surround myself with a new book, and some of the old favorites. I grabbed a book of Sonnets from one of my very favorite poets: Edna St. Vincent Millay. From what I have read of her, she was a very interesting woman, intising really. As most poetry is… her work is very much up for interpretation. 

Here are just two of her Sonnets: 

Women have loved before as I love now; 

At least in lively chronicles of the past - 

Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow

Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast

Much to their cost invaded - here and there, 

Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest, 

I find some woman bearing as I bear

Love like a burning city in the breast. 

I think however that of all alive

I only in such utter, ancient way 

Do suffer love; in me alone survive

The unregenerate passions of a day 

When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread, 

Heedless and willful, took their knights to bed. 

The heart once broken is a heart no more, 

And is absolved from all a heart must be; 

All that it signed or chattered heretofore

Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free; 

So much of duty as you my require

Of shards and dust, this and no more of pain, 

This and no more of hope, remorse, desire

The heart once broken need support again. 

How simple 'tis, and what a little sound

It makes in breaking, let the world attest: 

It struggles, and it fails; the world goes round, 

And the moon follows it. Heart in my breast, 

'Tis half a year now since you broke in two; 

The world's forgotten well, if the world knew.