Love+is+not+all

Love is not all; it is not meat nor drinkmedia type="youtube" key="K6LqhYMj5nM" width="291" height="126" align="right"
Millay's list of things that love is not is showing the reader that love is not the typical thing that people think they would need to survive. Human beings need food and water. According to "Popular Science", "Lying in a cool area you could probably survive for 8 to 10 days. . .You could live for 30 to 40 days with out food (given enough water)" (84). Just like human beings cannot survive long without water and food, they need love. It is not "all", but it is vital.

Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink /And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
A "spar" is a pole that is either made out of wood or metal and it is used on shipping vessels, they are used in the rigging of the sails which helps to support the sails to resist compresive and bending forces. With the repition of the words "sink and rise and sink and rise and sink" gives the image of the man sailing or being tossed by the waves, and with the use of the word spar the reader gets a sense that this is one more thing that is needed by man to survive, at least when sailing on the water.

Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
In this line of the poem Millay rebuttles againts the things mentioned earlier in the poem. She is saying that people may need those things, but they need love more, because even with those things that keep them alive with out love life is pointless. Also, when she writes, "man is making friends with death" she is, for one, personifying death in a way to make show that people would rather have company of a suicidal death than continue to be alone in life.

=Or nagged by want past resolution's power,/ I might be driven to sell your love for peace, /Or trade the memory of this night for food. / It well may be. I do not think I would. =

When it all comes down to it, love is the thing that is most needed and most wanted in life. Millay conveys that in the idea that the speaker of the poem would not give up his/her love to get rid of the greatest pain, becuase with love even the greatest nagging pain is not bad.