Stunning poem, juicy with gossip, but elevated above gossip by a clear concern with moral issues larger than the life choices of one poet.
The speaker prepares us for the personal angle--the gossip--twice: "I speculate" and "I suspect." That permits the speaker to assign motives to Millay without presenting evidence in the poem. The speculations include these possibilities:
1) Millay thought mothers had less opportunity to write, and chose the "lovely lines" of her poems rather than motherhood;
2) Millay thought mothers grew uglier, and did so earlier in life, than other people, and chose to retain her own good looks and physical "lovely lines," rather than settle for the disasters to the ego outlined in lines 10-12.
The cleverness of this poem is how it uses "beauty" in an ambiguous sense, so that Millay's choice is either that of a committed artist or a vain woman. That ambiguity becomes pointed in the final word, "affairs."
Am I reading this wrong?
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