Comments on: Edna St. Vincent Millay – Poet & Harlem Division Rider https://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2010/10/09/edna-st-vincent-millay-poet-harlem-division-rider/ Art, history, railroad, & photography adventures from Harlem & beyond. Tue, 17 Jan 2012 02:02:53 +0000 hourly 1 By: Al Cyone https://www.iridetheharlemline.com/2010/10/09/edna-st-vincent-millay-poet-harlem-division-rider/comment-page-1/#comment-17242 Sun, 10 Oct 2010 11:48:11 +0000 http://www.iridetheharlemline.com/?p=4030#comment-17242 A very nice poem. And for those who might be confused, the poet is not saying that the trains no longer run, but rather that each time one passes, she’s keenly aware of it, no matter what else is happening.

So the lines, “Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day/But I hear its whistle shrieking”, means, “There isn’t a time that a train goes by that I don’t hear its whistle”.

And if she wasn’t writing about the Harlem Line, she may well have been recalling the trains along the Hudson while she was a student at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie (where the posted photo of her was taken in 1914).

http://vcencyclopedia.vassar.edu/alumni/edna-st-vincent-millay.html

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