The speaker gives the impression that she is somehow defending herself and her decisions to another person. She, as most tend to do, is attempting to blame many of her actions on the other member of the relationship in question,
I…[a]m urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast…
The use of “you” in these lines does little more than place blame on the other party. The speaker feels she cannot accept any responsibility for the events that take place, or for the relationship itself. She plays it off with the words “the needs and notions of my kind,” saying that she cannot help what she says, does, or feels, that it is all the result of her nature as a woman. Millay's subject is slick, going so far as to give fault to the design of life so that she receives none of the heat. She, being a woman, cannot take the blame.
Then again, the speaker apparently finds herself to be a victim as much as anyone in a relationship. She refers to her clouded mind and the battle of her “stout blood” and “staggering brain”-this reveals that the external argument is not truly the issue at hand. It's the dispute she is having internally that is what really matters.
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Millay's use of the word “fume” is significant, as she uses it in reference to life itself. The insertion of so concrete a word as “fume” causes it to resonate throughout the poem; fumes are often viewed as irritating or offensive, so to say that life is a fume is shocking. What follows is a tremendous statement, to say that life is something that impairs one's reasoning, and to go on to say that it leaves her “undone” and “possessed.” The speaker strongly advocates this sentiment-that life itself is the great problem and that there is no real solution but to live it the best way one can.
The speaker goes on, though, to take control of the situation and stand up for what she feels is true-the relationship isn't real. Again, Millay exercises strong diction, referring to the relationship as a “frenzy.” The word choice is powerful, trivializing any feelings felt on either end of things as a state of madness. This has the potential to wound, allowing the speaker to escape the situation she is in. The end of the poem signifies the end of the debate of sorts:
Think not…I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.
In this, the speaker is saying that she will not think back on her lover fondly, nor will she even feel sorry for him. She finds the feelings she's experiencing to be worthless and implies at the end that she will never so much as speak to him again; a fitting ending for such a bitter, self-involved message.
