My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But, ah, my foes, and, oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s quatrain “First Fig” became emblematic of her early-1920s public persona: brilliant, modern, and defiantly self-directed. It was published in her short collection *A Few Figs from Thistles* (1920), a book associated with the post–World War I “New Woman” and Greenwich Village–era bohemian culture in which Millay moved. The poem’s epigrammatic wit and candor about living intensely—despite the cost—helped make it one of her most quoted lines, often invoked in discussions of youthful exuberance, artistic temperament, and the glamour (and danger) of burning through one’s energies.

The “candle” is a metaphor for a life lived at maximum intensity: burning “at both ends” suggests double expenditure of energy, time, or passion, guaranteeing a shorter duration (“It will not last the night”). Millay counters any moralizing with a proud, almost teasing address to “foes” and “friends”: even if such a life is brief, it produces “a lovely light”—beauty, vitality, and memorable brilliance. The poem thus balances mortality and aesthetic value, framing self-consumption not as mere recklessness but as a chosen trade-off: longevity sacrificed for radiance and immediacy.

1) “My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— / It gives a lovely light!”
2) “My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, / It gives a lovely light.”