# First Fig analysis

First Fig — Edna St. Vincent Millay (1920)

Millay’s candle metaphor makes a brief, intense life both risky and beautiful.

Full text from [First Fig](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14095/first-fig). Public domain in the US (Published in 1920, before the US public-domain cutoff.).

## Summary

The speaker’s candle burns at both ends, promising a short night but producing a lovely light.[1]

```
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
```

Friends and foes are invited to witness the speaker’s intense choice.

## Meaning and interpretation

The candle represents a life spent with unusual energy, appetite, or creative and erotic freedom. The exact behavior remains deliberately open.

```
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!
```

The final exclamation turns a warning about exhaustion into celebration.[2]

## Themes

### Intensity and transience

Brilliance is inseparable from self-consumption and limited time.

### Defiance

Addressing foes and friends together places public judgment beneath personal choice.

### Present beauty

```
It gives a lovely light!
```

The poem values immediate experience over future duration.

## Form and meter

The four-line lyric uses a common-meter or ballad-stanza pattern with alternating longer and shorter lines.

ABAB rhyme makes the rebellious declaration polished, memorable, and songlike.

## Literary devices

### Extended metaphor

```
My candle burns at both ends;
```

The flame joins pleasure to risk and brightness to self-consumption.

### Apostrophe

```
my foes, and oh, my friends—
```

The public address makes the speaker’s choice performative and witnessed.

### Alliteration

The repeated b sounds give the opening momentum; “lovely light” softens the final image.

## Historical context

The poem appeared in Poetry in 1918 and opened A Few Figs from Thistles in 1920. Scholarship reads the volume as challenging gendered expectations about time, work, and sexuality.[2]

Its familiar meter gives a modern, defiant claim a traditional lyric frame.

## What critics say

> “the poems in this short series debunk a conservative economy of time and work”
>
> — [Textual Cultures](https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/textual/article/download/2117/26571/45516)

> “It gives a lovely light!”
>
> — [Women Writers](https://pressbooks.marshall.edu/womenwriters/chapter/edna-st-vincent-millay/)

## Common questions

### What is the meaning?

The poem celebrates living intensely despite the cost of a shorter, less restrained life.

### What does the candle symbolize?

It symbolizes life, creative energy, and possibly erotic freedom.

### What is the form?

A four-line common-meter quatrain with ABAB rhyme.

## References

- [Poetry Foundation](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/14095/first-fig)

- [Textual Cultures](https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/textual/article/download/2117/26571/45516)

- [Women Writers](https://pressbooks.marshall.edu/womenwriters/chapter/edna-st-vincent-millay/)

- [LitCharts](https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/edna-st-vincent-millay/first-fig)

## Open the editor

Write with this poem’s meter in the editor: https://lyriic.com/write/common-meter