Edna St. Vincent Millay, the first of the three daughters of Cora Buzzelle Millay and Henry Tolman Millay, was born in Rockland, Maine, on 22 February 1892. In 1900 Cora Millay divorced her husband, an educator with a fondness for poker playing, and settled with her girls in Camden, Maine, providing for the family by nursing. It is little wonder that the poet retained a lifelong devotion to the woman who encouraged in all her daughters self-reliance and a love for music and books. The musical talent of Vincent (as she was known in the family) was so obvious that a local teacher gave her piano lessons, hoping to prepare her for a musical career. After a few years the plan was abandoned, but music remained a source of pleasure, a subject for poetry, and undoubtedly the basis for her unfailing sense of poetic rhythm.
It was Millay's early interest in literature that became dominant and soon, augmented by her responsiveness to nature, found expression in original compositions. At the age of fourteen she had a poem, "Forest Trees," published in St. Nicholas magazine, a popular children's periodical that printed a number of her juvenile works.
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