“What lips my lips have kissed” is a poem written in 1923 by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The poem outlines a woman’s promiscuous past, and the guilt that overwhelms her. The poem has a deep, dark, somber tone which sets up a feeling of remorse and guilt. Her readers are taught a valuable life lesson, don’t waste your chance at true love. In “What lips my lips have kissed” Millay shows her readers, through personal life experiences, the sexual desires of women in the 1920’s, and the consequences of squandering true love. Society in the 1920s was very different from the one we live in today. World War I had ended in 1918, just five years before Millay wrote this poem. Furthermore, women were given the right to vote in 1920, just three years before the poem was written. The 1920s were a new era for female freedom and sexual liberation. They marked the age of the Flapper Girls, women who were uninhibited and sexually explicit. Millay writes about a promiscuous woman during this time period, possibly herself, and the guilt felt afterwards. In the first two lines Millay writes, “What lips my lips have …show more content…
In the third, fourth, and fifth lines Millay recalls how several boys would come to her window and tap on the glass for an encounter. Millay writes, “…but the rain / Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh / Upon the glass and listen for reply” (639). She remembers the encounters by comparing the rain hitting her window to boys tapping on the glass. Millay uses the word “ghosts” as her memories. Even though she could remember the encounters, she can’t recall the names of the boys, or the number of them that she saw. Millay goes on to say, “And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain / For unremembered lads that not again / Will turn to me at midnight with a cry” (639). Her memories are full of young men that she dated, but will no longer see. Perhaps she feels guilty for breaking many hearts through her