Edna St. Vincent Millay

Millay was a poet and playwright of the Twentieth Century. She was fairly successful and appreciated by most people throughout her life. She was a feminist and spoke out against injustices during her time.

In 1923, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her poem, The Ballard of the Harp-Weaver. Reading it quickly, it seems odd and meaningless story or account of boy’s childhood and the role his mother played. However, there’s plenty of slightly hidden meaning and symbolism.

The story is told by the boy looking back on his childhood, sometimes quoting his mother from memory. Still, he sees things from a male perspective, and thereby missing significant aspects of life. The boy is an only child and his father is dead. His mother is sad that she has been struggling to provide even the most basic needs for him, in particular clothes. He can’t go to school or play with other boys because he’s virtually naked with only rags to wear.

Given the rules of society, his mother is allowed no means to care for her son outside the home. Through the symbolism of a harp, while the boy sleeps, he dreams that his mother plays the harp, from which the music magically makes him fine clothes to wear. When he wakes, the clothes are there and his mother is dead with her fingers frozen to the harp strings. The boy, in essence and from his societal view, didn’t see that his mother had anything to contribute to his life, and despite her love and sympathy for him, and although she died providing for him, what he needed came to him magically – perhaps because he thinks he deserved it.

I can related to this in a couple of ways: First and perhahps most shameful is how little I appreciated how my mother took care of me and my siblings after my father died when I was three years old. I loved her very much and was always proud of her, but I wasn’t always kind to her and I was oblivious to her struggle. Second, I feel like I’m being treated similarly by my teenage step-daughter: my struggle to provide for her, the sacrifices I’m making for her are ignored and she seems to think the results of my efforts appeared magically and are deserved to her by life. I at least don’t have the societal disadvantages that my mother have and I haven’t been alone in providing for my children.

Note

There are quite a few stamps I could write about on this album page. I chose to write about Edna Millay – featured on the first stamp on the third row – because I knew very little about her. So I researched her and read some of her works to better appreciate her and understand the attraction. Her style of writing is from a different time, but her message is still relevant today.

Contains 16 spots: own 16 – 16 unused, 0 used.
Page is finished.
Album or Web Page Last changed May 17, 2025

Stamp Details

The table below lists information about the stamps shown on this page of Lighthouse’s stamp album. For more details about a particular stamp, click on its description. That will take you to the related web page of Colnect.

spot	own	catalog	subject	description
1.1	✓	1874	Everett Dirksen	15c (jan 1981) comm., grey
1.2	✓	1910	American Red Cross 100 Years	18c (may 1981) comm., multicolor
1.3	✓	1911	Savings & Loans	18c (may 1981) comm., multicolor
1.4	✓	1875	Whitney Moore Young	15c (jan 1981) comm., multicolor
2.1	✓	1920	Joseph Wharton Wharton School of Business	18c (jun 1981) comm., blue & black
2.2	✓	1927	Alcoholism	18c (aug 1981) comm., blue & black
2.3	✓	1925	Disabled Workers	18c (jun 1981) comm., multicolor

Famous Americans

3.1	✓	1926	Edna St. Vincent Millay	18c (jul 1981) comm., multicolor
3.2	✓	1932	Mildred Didrikson	18c (sep 1981) comm., purple
3.3	✓	1933	Robert Tyre Jones	18c (sep 1981) comm., green
3.4	✓	1941	John Hanson	20c (nov 1981) comm., multicolor

Other

4.1	✓	1935	James Hoban	18c (oct 1981) comm., multicolor
4.2	✓	1934	Coming through the Rye Frederic Remington	18c (oct 1981) comm., multicolor
4.3	✓	1936	James Hoban	20c (oct 1981) comm., multicolor

Christmas & Holidays

5.1	✓	1939	Madonna & Child Botticelli	None (oct 1981) comm., multicolor
5.2	✓	1940	Felt Bear on Sleigh	None (oct 1981) comm., multicolor

Footnotes

Spot refers to the postion of the stamp on the album page (e.g., 3.2 indicates row 3, position 2).
Amt. is an abbreviation for the face amount of the stamp.
Own indicates the stamp status: ✓ for unused; ✗ for used or canceled; ⭑ signifies I ordered one; ; ✨ indicates it was bought recently; ✠ means an auction bid is pending; and ◎ is used, and it costs too much for unused.
To search by catalog number, go to the search box and enter it in the catalog number box. However, it’s a bit broken; I need to fix it.