Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

An American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, pacifist, patriot, director of plays and actress, Edna St. Vincent led a full and vibrant life as a feminist artist living in the first half of the 20th century. 

Like all the poets posted here, her biography seems too great to be condensed into a few sentences.  But one instance that highlights her passion for freedom and pacifism was her arrest in 1927 for protesting, along with other famous artists, the controversial execution of two Italian immigrants. 

Edna carried a sign that read “If These Men Are Executed, Justice is Dead in Massachusetts” and later wrote several poems about the death of the two men - Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti – including “Justice Denied in Massachusetts”.

Photo: Edna St. Vincent Millay