The line is from Millay's poem "Make Bright the Arrows" which is part of a poem cycle in which she dueled with Robinson Jeffers. Millay was an Anglophile and interventionist in the years leading up to US entry into World War II. Jeffers was a staunch non-interventionist and pacifist. His cycle of poems is collected in "The Double Axe." I've post a couple of poems from this previously.
Both Millay and Jeffers were very popular poets and both had been featured on the cover of Time magazine. Their opinions were taken very seriously by the public. Millay's readings were so popular crowds gathered outside the halls where she recited and loudspeakers had to be set up so they could hear her. Jeffers was too much of a Gloomy Gus to attract those sorts of crowds, and also considerably more intellectual. He also wrote about taboo subjects such as incest and was a west coast writer while Millay was a New Englander, so she got the nod among the elites. Her views were also, of course, in line with those of the Roosevelt administration, which began conducting a covert naval war against Germany in the North Atlantic long before Pearl Harbor.
Millay went on to enjoy a still-popular presence on the American literary scene after the war, while Jeffers was unpersoned, his career over. It was many years before he was partially rehabilitated, but by then tastes had changed and poetry was no longer popular.
Here's an interview with Hitler published in Life magazine in which he discusses FDR's hostile actions against his country, noting that they violate international law. The unhighlighted text is a continuation of the interview in which Hitler addresses assertions made in Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address that Germany was planning to invade the western hemisphere. Hitler remarkably admits that the invasion of Crete was a very difficult endeavor for German armed forces and hints that an invasion of Britain was beyond possible, so the likelihood of Germany carrying out a trans-Atlantic invasion was risible. The only country ever to do that, as it turned out, would be the United States in Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa in November, 1942, in which the invasion fleet sailed directly from the east coast of the US.
Here is Jeffers' poem "[President] Wilson in Hell." Written in 1942, it was excised from The Double Axe by Random House's Bennett Cerf.
Roosevelt died and met Wilson; who said “I
blundered into it
Through honest error, and conscience cut me so deep that
I died
In the vain effort to prevent future wars. But you
Blew on the coal-bed, and when it kindled you deliberately
Sabotaged every fire-wall that even the men who denied
My hope had built. You have too much murder on your
hands. I will not
Speak of the lies and connivings. I cannot understand the
Mercy
That permits us to meet in the same heaven.—Or is this
my hell?”
Another suppressed Jeffers poem is “So Many Blood-Lakes” written a few days after Germany surrendered in 1945:
We have now won two world-wars, neither of
which concerned us, we were slipped in.
We have leveled the powers
Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble
and dependence. We have won two wars and a
third is coming…
—As for me: laugh at me. I agree with you. it is a foolish
business to see the future and screech at it.
One should watch and not speak. And patriotism has run
the world through so many blood-lakes: and we
always fall in.
The pro-war, interventionist viewpoint is clearly expressed in Edna St. Vincent's poem, "There Are No Islands Anymore," suppressed by no one, but published in The New York Times on November 25, 1940. Here's how the poem was featured in the Times:
Dear Isolationist, you are
So very, very insular!
Surely you do not take offense?-
The word’s well used in such a sense.
‘Tis you, not I, sir, who insist
You are an Isolationist.
And oh, how sweet a thing to be
Safe on an island, not at sea!
(Though some one said, some months ago-
I heard him, and he seemed to know;
Was it the German Chancellor?
“There are no islands anymore.”)
Dear Islander, I envy you:
I’m very fond of islands, too;
And few the pleasures I have known
Which equaled being left alone.
Yet matters from without intrude
At times upon my solitude:
A forest fire, a dog run mad,
A neighbor stripped of all he had
By swindlers, or the shrieking plea
For help, of stabbed Democracy.
Startled, I rise, run from the room,
Join the brigade of spade and broom;
Help to surround the sickened beast;
Hear the account of farmers fleeced
By dapper men, condole, and give
Something to help them hope and live;
Or, if democracy’s at stake,
Give more, give more than I can make;
And notice, with a rueful grin,
What was without is now within.
(The tidal wave devours the shore:
There are no islands any more.)
With sobbing breath, with blistered hands,
Men fight the forest fire in bands;
With kitchen broom, with branch of pine,
Beat at the blackened, treacherous line;
Before the veering wind fall back,
With eyebrows burnt and faces black;
While breasts in blackened streams perspire.
Watch how the wind runs with the fire
Like a broad banner up the hill-
And can no more… yet more must still.
New life!-To hear across the field
Voices of neighbors, forms concealed
By smoke, but loud the nearing shout:
“Hold on! We’re coming! Here it’s out!”
(The tidal wave devours the shore:
There are no islands any more.)
This little life from here to there-
Who lives it safely anywhere?
Not you, my insulated friend:
What calm composure will defend
Your rock, when tides you’ve never seen
Assault the sands of What-has-been,
And from your island’s tallest tree,
You watch advance What-is-to-be?
(The tidal wave devours the shore:
There are no islands any more.)
Sweet, sweet, to see the tide approach,
Assured that it cannot encroach
Upon the beach-peas, often wet
With spray, never uprooted yet.
The moon said-did she not speak true?-
“The waves will not awaken you.
At my command the waves retire.
Sleep, weary mind; dream, heart’s desire.”
And yet, there was a Danish king
So sure he governed everything
He bade the ocean not to rise.
It did. And great was his surprise.
No man, no nation, is made free
By stating it intends to be.
Jostled and elbowed is the clown
Who thinks to walk alone in town.
We live upon a shrinking sphere-
Like it or not, our home is here;
Brave heart, uncomprehending brain
Could make it seem like home again.
There are no islands any more.
The tide that mounts our drowsy shore
Is boats and men-there is no place
For waves in such a crowded space.
Oh, let us give, before too late,
To those who hold our country’s fate
Along with theirs-be sure of this-
In grimy hands-that will not miss
The target, if we stand beside
Loading the guns-resentment, pride,
Debts torn across with insolent word-
All this forgotten, or deferred
At least until there’s time for strife
Concerning things less dear than Life;
Than let, if must be, in the brain
Resentment rankle once again,
Quibbling and Squabbling take the floor,
Cool Judgment go to sleep once more.
On English soil, on French terrain,
Democracy’s at grips again
With forces forged to stamp it out
This time no quarter!-since no doubt.
Not France, not England’s what’s involved,
Not we, –there’s something to be solved
Of grave concern to free men all:
Can Freedom stand? -Must Freedom fall?
(Meantime, the tide devours the shore:
There are no islands any more.)
Oh, build, assemble, transport, give,
That England, France and we may live,
Before tonight, before too late,
To those who build our country’s fate
In desperate fingers, reaching out
For weapons we confer about,
All that we can, and more, and now!
Oh, God, let not the lovely brow
Of Freedom in the trampled mud
Grow cold! Have we no brains, no blood,
No enterprise-no any thing
Of which we proudly talk and sing,
Which we like men can bring to bear
For Freedom, and against Despair?
Lest French and British fighters, deep
In battle, needing guns and sleep,
For lack of aid be overthrown
And we be left to fight alone.
