The Full Text of “Recuerdo”
1We were very tired, we were very merry—
2We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
3It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
4But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
5We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
6And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
7We were very tired, we were very merry—
8We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
9And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
10From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
11And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
12And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
13We were very tired, we were very merry,
14We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
15We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
16And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
17And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
18And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
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“Recuerdo” Introduction
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Edna St. Vincent Millay's "Recuerdo" is a joyful celebration of life's simple pleasures. The poem describes two friends (or, perhaps, lovers) having a wonderful time riding a ferry back and forth, eating fruit, and gazing up at the moon. Through its exuberant depiction of what appears, on its surface, to be a relatively ordinary night, the poem suggests that the best things in life don't cost much—and that good company can transform a mundane night into something to remember. The poem appeared in Millay's 1920 collection A Few Figs from Thistles and was reportedly inspired by a night Millay spent with her friend and fellow poet Salomón de la Selva riding New York's Staten Island ferry.
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“Recuerdo” Summary
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We were exhausted but very happy. We spent the whole night riding the ferry back and forth from the port; it was unfussy, brightly lit, and smelled of horses. You and I stared into a fire and sat close together at a table. Later, we lay on top of a hill and looked at the moon. The ferry blew its whistle over and over again, and soon enough it was early morning.
We were exhausted but very happy. We spent the whole night riding the ferry back and forth from the port, eating some of the fruit that we'd bought earlier in the evening. The sky turned gray, a cold wind blew, and then the sun rose from the water looking like a whole bucket filled with gold.
We were exhausted but very happy. We spent the whole night riding the ferry back and forth from the port. Then we said good morning to an old woman wearing a scarf around her head and bought a newspaper that we didn't read. The old woman tearfully thanked us when we gave her the rest of our fruit, along with the rest of our money—except for what we needed to get home on the train.
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“Recuerdo” Themes
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The Beauty and Power of Companionship
"Recuerdo" testifies to the transformative power and beauty of companionship. According to poetry legend, Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote the poem after a night spent riding New York's Staten Island Ferry with a friend. Whether this story is true or not, the poem's speaker clearly looks back on a fun and frivolous evening spent with a companion as something special and, as the title suggests, worthy of remembering ("recuerdo" is Spanish for "I remember" or "memory"). Being with the right person, the poem implies, can suffuse everyday life with a special kind of magic.
The poem describes two friends (or maybe lovers) going "back and forth all night on the ferry." The speaker recalls "look[ing] into a fire," leaning "across a table," and lying on a hill looking up at the moon. In short, it seems like a pretty low-key evening where not much happens. They have nowhere in particular to go, it seems, and perhaps don't have much money to spend. Indeed, this is no glamorous cruise ship: the ferry smells "like a stable" and the air is "cold."
Yet none of this matters to the speaker, who repeatedly declares that they are "very merry," or happy. The speaker and their friend are having such a delightful time, in fact, that they stay up till dawn, suggesting that time flies when you spend it with the right person. In describing the sunrise as a "bucketful of gold," the speaker also implies that this shared experience—watching the sun come up with a person you care for—is something precious. The poem thus stresses that it's not what you do but who you're with that matters. The simple fact of being together has made the speaker happy and made this adventure meaningful.
Upon returning to land, the speaker and their companion buy a "morning paper" that neither of them reads, suggesting that the drab events of real life are no match for the intoxicating joy of good company. Their shared happiness also seems to make them feel generous towards others: they give their leftover fruit, and most of their money, to a "shawl-covered" woman who blesses them in turn. In other words, they pay their happiness forward. Companionship, the poem implies, makes the world a better place.
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Love vs. Material Wealth
"Recuerdo" suggests that you don't need riches to be happy. The speaker and their companion have a wonderful evening—and morning—and hardly spend a cent. In fact, they seem to revel in rejecting material comforts and giving away what little money they do have. Whether it's love, friendship, appreciating nature, or just being alive and venturing out into the world, the best things in life, the poem suggests, are free.
The speaker and their companion set out on a cheap date, and there's nothing fancy about their night out. They take public transportation that smells "like a stable" (there might even be some horses on board), and they're not taking it to get anywhere. The boat is just a place to hang out, it seems, and that's all they really need. When they eventually get off the ferry, they're perfectly content to lie on a hill looking at the moon until dawn. No one charges admission for sky-gazing!
The poem repeatedly calls attention to the fact that the couple is on a simple, unpretentious adventure. And though the night doesn't sound like (or cost) much on paper, the speaker and their companion still clearly have a great time together. They enjoy their kind of luxury, one that doesn't depend on money or consumerism. They're happy simply to be together; their date is about the company, not the activity. That's why they go "back and forth all night," prolonging their happiness even though they're "very tired." That's also why the poem describes the dawn in such affectionate terms. The sun rises "dripping," looking like a "bucketful of gold"—a kind of wealth that has nothing to do with actual money. It signals the richness of the couple's experiences, the value of time spent with each other and in appreciation of the natural world.
Even though the couple probably doesn't have much money, this spiritual richness makes them generous toward others. As morning breaks, they give what they have left to a "shawl-covered" woman, whose gratitude suggests that she's poor and hungry. They also give her their remaining "apples and pears," their only expenditure besides the ferry rides, and keep just enough money to get home on the subway. The night becomes one to remember ("recuerdo"), but not because of any lavish indulgence. All the couple needed, really, was each other; the rest is immaterial.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Recuerdo”
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Lines 1-3
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—The poem's title, "Recuerdo," means "memory" or "I remember" in Spanish. Right away, then, readers might get the sense that this is going to be a poem about an important moment in the speaker's life, one that they want to hold onto.
The poem was supposedly based on a night Edna St. Vincent Millay spent with Salomón de la Selva, a Nicaraguan poet and friend, during which they rode back and forth on New York's Staten Island ferry in New York. Readers don't need to know this context to understand these opening lines, however, which describe the speaker and a companion happily riding a "ferry" to and from its port "all night."
This might not seem like the most enjoyable way to spend an evening, especially given that the ferry "smelled like a stable." Indeed, the speaker makes it clear that this is no fancy cruise liner; the ferry is "bare and bright," free from cozy decoration or soft lighting. The bold alliteration of "bare and bright" and the hissing sibilance of "smelled" and "stable" call readers' attention to just how physically unpleasant the onboard experience must be.
Most people taking the ferry would, quite reasonably, have just been trying to get to the other side. For the speaker and their friend, however, the night is about the journey more than the destination—and the journey is just a way for them to spend more time together. It sounds like the kind of thing broke students or artists might do to pass the time.
The speaker and their compansion are thus perfectly content, "very tired" but also "very merry." The anaphora of "we were very" adds a kind of sing-song rhythm to the moment, establishing an atmosphere of carefree joy. The same is true of the musical internal rhyme between "very" and "merry." Line 2 then once again begins with "we," another example of anaphora.
The abundance of "we"s in the poem is no accident: this is a poem about the beauty and power of companionship, so it makes sense that the speaker repeatedly points out that they're part of a "we." That "we" foregrounds the reason why the speaker remembers that night fondly: who it was spent with. Even the poem's form echoes the importance of companionship: "Recuerdo" consists of rhyming couplets—rhymed pairs—from start to finish.
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Lines 4-6
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
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Lines 7-10
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; -
Lines 11-12
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. -
Lines 13-18
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.
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“Recuerdo” Symbols
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The Newspaper
After staying up all night, the speaker and their companion buy a newspaper that they never bother to read. This symbolizes their rejection of the humdrum reality of everyday life, something that the speaker doesn't want to intrude on their enchanted night (and morning) out. With its articles on politics and the economy, its advertisements, and so on, the newspaper is a symbol of the world that exists beyond the bubble of happiness that surrounds the speaker and their companion. The paper also gets published each morning like clockwork, a signal that another ordinary day has begun. The fact that the speaker and their companion don't read the newspaper implies that they don't yet want to let go of the previous evening's magic.
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“Recuerdo” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration fills the poem with bright, happy music that evokes the speaker's joy. It also brings scenes from the speaker's evening to vivid life on the page.
For example, the bold /b/ sounds of "bare and bright" call readers' attention to the ferry's austereness; this isn't a lush, cozy boat but rather something utilitarian and starkly lit. The ship "smelled like a stable," the speaker continues, the hissing sibilance perhaps conveying the speaker's disgust.
The alliteration in lines 4 and 5 is gentler. Listen to the delicate /l/ sounds here:
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;These soft sounds suggest the sweet beauty of the evening, something that persists despite the speaker's stark surroundings. Alliteration also makes the lines more memorable, helping the poem linger in the reader's ear just as the scene lingers in the speaker's mind. The parallelism and anaphora of the lines add to the effect: the speaker says "we did this, we did that," creating a soothing, predictable rhythm.
The alliteration of lines 11-12 again enhances the poem's imagery:
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
Those quiet /w/ sounds might suggest a quiet reverence on the speaker's part as the inky blackness of night gives way to the gray of the dawn, while the crisp sounds of "came cold" evokes the sharp chill of the wind.
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Metaphor
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Refrain
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Repetition
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Parataxis
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“Recuerdo” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Merry
- Stable
- Wan
- Morrow
- Shawl
Merry-
Happy.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Recuerdo”
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Form
"Recuerdo" contains three six-line stanzas, a.k.a. sestets. Each stanza can be broken down further into three rhyming couplets. A couplet, of course, is a kind of tight-knit twosome—just like the speaker and their companion.
Note that each stanza also begins with the same two lines:
We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.This refrain establishes the basic facts of the evening in question, and it also subtly mirrors the speaker's "back and forth" ferry journeys; the poem, like the speaker, keeps returning to its starting point.
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Meter
"Recuerdo" uses meter, but it's quite irregular. Line 1 is trochaic hexameter: a line of six trochees, poetic feet following a stressed-unstressed syllable pattern:
We were | very | tired, | we were | very | merry—
Line 2 is a bit more irregular. The stresses are still front-loaded, and there are still 12 syllables, but there are some dactyls (stressed-unstressed-unstressed) tossed in:
We had | gone back and | forth all | night on the | ferry.
The rhythm feels propulsive and exciting, and the relatively steady meter makes the poem's refrain easier to remember. Things get much less regular after these lines, however. Line 3 keeps up the use of trochees with a rogue dactyl tossed in (one might scan this as a line of trochaic pentameter, meaning there are five trochees,):
It was | bare and | bright, and | smelled like a | stable—
But things get more ambiguous as readers get deeper into the poem. Compare line 3 to line 9, which swaps the falling rhythm of trochees for the rising rhythms of iambs (da-DUM) and anapests (da-da-DUM):
And you | ate an ap- | ple, and I | ate a pear,
The fact that the meter never fully settles keeps the poem feeling loose and unpredictable. The poem is rhythmic but not rigid or strict, reflecting the carefree attitude of the speaker and their companion.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Recuerdo" uses rhyming couplets all the way through, meaning that its rhyme scheme follows the pattern AABBCC AADDEE and so on. The quick, perfect rhymes fill the poem with constant music, adding to its joyful, lighthearted tone. The poem simply sounds playful, as if the speaker is having fun remembering what happened. Couplets are also rhyming pairs, making them a perfect form for a poem about the joys of companionship.
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“Recuerdo” Speaker
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Edna St. Millay reportedly based "Recuerdo" on a night spent riding New York's Staten Island Ferry with her friend and fellow poet Salomón de la Selva. As such, it's reasonable to treat the speaker as a version of Millay.
Readers don't have to interpret the speaker as Millay to understand the poem, however, given that "Recuerdo" never offers up any specific details about this speaker's age, gender, etc. All readers really know is that this person had a wonderful time riding a ferry back and forth all night with a friend or lover.
The speaker doesn't seem to be well off, or at least not particularly concerned with material wealth; if they were rich, they probably wouldn't spend their evening on a smelly ferry or ride the subway home the next morning. Despite not having much, the speaker comes across as generous and carefree, delighting in time spent with their companion, the beauty of nature, and the simple pleasures of fresh fruit. To this speaker, good company is a treasure in itself.
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“Recuerdo” Setting
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Though the poem itself takes place in the speaker's present, the evening it describes takes place in the past—hence the poem's title: "recuerdo" is Spanish for "I remember" or "memory." There's no indication how long ago this evening happened; it could have been last night, or it could have been decades ago. Either way, the memory of the evening has stuck with the speaker.
On its face, this doesn't sound like a particularly eventual night: the speaker and their companion simply rode the ferry back and forth. The speaker makes it clear that this was no glamorous cruise ship: it "smelled like a stable" and wasn't particularly nice to look at (it was "bare and bright"). By calling attention to just how ordinary the ferry was, the poem underscores the power of companionship: the speaker and their friend still had a great time because they had each other for company.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Recuerdo”
Literary Context
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was a major poet in her own lifetime, winning a Pulitzer Prize for her thoughtful and often radical depictions of love and suffering. Her poetry was at once sincere and playful, and today she's remembered for her work's wit as well as its beauty. Her writing was also noted for its modern take on the battle of the sexes: the women in her poems are often just as cavalier and calculating about love as men were traditionally expected to be.
"Recuerdo" appears as the third poem in Millay's collection A Few Figs From Thistles. The collection caused a stir when it was published in 1920, largely thanks to its unabashed exploration of female sexuality, and it set the tone for much of Millay's later work. Although she had not yet achieved the level of fame her Pulitzer Prize would bring in 1923, Millay at this point had already received a healthy amount of recognition for her writing. Having moved to the bohemian enclave of Greenwich Village in New York City in 1917, she was also famously social. Her zest for life is on clear display in poems like "First Fig," "Midnight Oil" and "Grown-up," which, like "Recuerdo," reject the idea of being overly sensible (and, in particular, of going to bed early). Indeed, the speaker of "First Fig" states that they burn life's metaphorical candle at both ends—which "Recuerdo" then demonstrates! The poem was probably written about a night spent riding New York's Staten Island Ferry with a poet friend, Salomón de la Selva. (He was Nicaraguan, which might explain the use of Spanish in the title.)
Some of Millay's contemporaries compared her to Sappho for her frankness about love. But her formal, lyrical verse was seen as a bit out of step with the stylish, experimental modernism of her contemporaries Eliot and Pound. Her poetic reputation thus declined after her death, until later writers like Mary Oliver rediscovered her. Today, she's seen as an influential and important poet.
Historical Context
Millay wrote "Recuerdo" at the start of the "Roaring Twenties," a decade defined by economic prosperity and vast cultural changes. The 19th amendment, which granted women the right to vote, was ratified in 1920, and the spread of inventions like automobiles and electricity provided many new personal freedoms to individuals.
During this period of change, many people began to defy the stodgy moral standards of the past. From fashion to sexuality, women across the country were particularly interested in exploring and challenging convention. At the same time, their rights and societal expectations were still quite limiting compared to those of men. Millay herself was known for her feminist views and activism, and much of her work reflects her rebellious spirit.
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More “Recuerdo” Resources
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External Resources
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Millay's Biography — Read more about Millay's life, courtesy of the Edna St. Vincent Millay Society.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to a reading of the poem brought via the Millay society.
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"The Staten Island Ferry: NYC's Famous Best-Kept Secret" — Learn more about the ferry that allegedly inspired Millay's poem.
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Millay's Legacy — Read about the ways in which Millay and her work are perceived today.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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