Edna St. Vincent Millay
1892 — 1950
“All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.”
— First stanza “Renascence,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay written in 1910 in the environs of Mount Battie
At the age of eighteen, a frail girl with flaming red hair left her home in early morning to climb her favorite Camden Hills, where so deeply affected by her surroundings, she wrote “Renascence.” The poem received immediate public acclaim and was the inspired beginning of the career of America’s finest lyric poet.
Marker can be reached from Mount Battie Road.
Courtesy hmdb.org
