Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poem, “Still I will harvest beauty where it grows” suggests that 

beauty is not a superficial concept and can be found in everything if one just looks thoroughly enough.

First, Millay describes that she will “harvest beauty where it grows” giving off the impression that beauty is not a predisposed concept that only certain things possess, rather she presents the idea that it is always rooted somewhere just waiting to be watered so it can reveal itself like the seed of a plant waiting to grow from the ground. She personifies beauty within this metaphor through the word “grows” to show its plasticity and how it can be stretched across even the ugliest of concepts, whether one notices that beauty or not. The word “harvest” is implemented to express the value of beauty and the gain that the world receives from even the smallest of things like a plant blooming, one just has to learn to appreciate that value, just as a farmer finds value in their crops that are harvested for profit or gain. 

To further buttress this idea, the following line includes natural things that are usually connoted with less than beautiful ideas. The words of “colored fungus and the spotted fog” usually give off the impression of something disgusting or irritable to encounter. However, the illustrative diction, which can be seen through the words “colorful” and “spotted”,  used around fog and fungus shines a new light that passes through the ugly, external appearances of these objects in order to showcase their more inner beauties. The vibrant colors of the fungus that are usually considered unsettling become beautiful because they aren’t artificially produced and come from the ecosystems of the Earth. Moreover, the spottedness of the fog is not something that should be avoided or considered irritating, rather it should be embraced, as it is a beautiful result of the Earth’s processes that are not orchestrated or influenced by the human race. This line kickstarts a list of things that Millay proves are beautiful if you look past their initial appearance and consider the complexity of ideas like the biological processes behind said superficial, sometimes off-putting, appearance. 

Adding to that list, Millay once again brings up colors, this time ones that form on rotting food and appear in ditches filled with the mud. These aren’t things that are inherently thought to be beautiful; however, Millay brings them to light to prove that even some of the most repulsive commodities contain beauty, whether society chooses to look at it that way or not. This can be seen through the use of the word “Surprised” to describe the colors of litter and rotting food. The list of things not usually considered beautiful continues in Millay’s efforts when she breaks to the next line. She uses imagery to introduce the idea of “rainbows” filled with vibrant colors, before she jumps to the next line and uses that as leverage to make her readers realize that those beautiful characteristics can be found in unattractive concepts like oil spills and rust. This pulls her reader in by separating the ugly details with a line break only to spring it back in their face by bringing up something beautiful that can be seen within rusted metal or an oil filled ocean. Through these few lines, it is apparent that Millay enjoys pairing positively connotated words with ideas that are usually considered repulsive in order to prove that beauty lies within every thing if you just look past the superficial and literal concepts like rotting food or pollution. Once again she is driving home the idea that beauty can be found within those things, but if one simply looks past society’s standard for constant perfection and flawlessness in order for something to be considered beautiful. 

The next line takes a similar approach. It is a call out to pollution, and she says “…where half a city throws” (referring to tins and wrappers) in the same line that discusses rust and oil in order to explain how pollution spreads by the wind blowing man-made wrappers and tins all over cities. While considered to be trash and pollution by most people, Millay sees the various wrappers for their lively colors and the metal as something shiny amidst dull cities. Yet another example of beauty hiding within a less beautiful concept. 

Millay then returns to explaining the hidden beauty of nature. By continuing to rhyme words ending in “og”, it emphasizes the initial lethargic feeling that comes with talking about fog, bogs, logs, and frogs; however, Millay once again uses illustrative diction to with words like “oozy” and “emerald” to define a swamp covered in “green scum” or moss, but beneath the surface lies some sort of animals which can be seen through “a black pupil”. This is a subtle hiny at the fact that the beauty lies beneath the surface, and can be overlooked by anxious individuals that have no desire to dig deeper than a superficial layer, but when one takes the time to observe and dive into other ideas, they might just find something like a beautiful frog beneath that surface of moss. 

Millay continues to showcase the consistency of hidden beauty by fully personifying it in line 9 through the capitalization of the word “Her”. As a person lives in a house she claims that beauty “inhabits” the places of divers, or the ocean: a place where you only see it’s true beauty if you dive deeper than the surface to unlock entirely new ecosystems, creatures, and even new things that have yet to be explored. Then comes the sonnets shift where Millay calls on her own practices and how she attempts to see beauty everywhere. By explaining that she “Surmis[es] at all doors and [she] push[es] them all” she is referring to her ability to assume that everything has beauty without necessarily having societal evidence to back it up. She then criticizes her readers by complaining that they are “fearful of a creaking hinge”, which is another way of saying that people are too quick to judge when a concept is not completely perfect, and they cower at the smallest things like a creaky door, which gets in the way of their ability to see beauty in everything. The final three lines act as a call to action. Millay challenges her readers to “Turn back forever more” with those cowardly faces by directly referring to her reader by saying “Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl”. This aims to urge her reader to try to search for the beauty that has always been present in their lives, but is just waiting to be acknowledged and uncovered. 

While Millay’s poem is only a single stanza, it is packed with illustrative imagery, metaphors, and personification that showcase the true beauty of the Earth in both its natural and industrial aspects. It exposes the toxic ideas that constant perfection is needed in today’s society in order to classify something as beautiful, when in reality the only thing necessary for beauty is the thing being judged itself. Overall, Millay’s poetic choices prove that beauty is indeed in everything if one makes the small effort to peel back the superficial layers of a concept, be it a person or an object, to reveal its inner beauty.