Analysis of Not Even My Pride Shall Suffer Much
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
Not even my pride shall suffer much;
Not even my pride at all, maybe,
If this ill-timed, intemperate clutch
Be loosed by you and not by me,
Will suffer; I have been so true
A vestal to that only pride
Wet wood cannot extinguish, nor
Sand, nor its embers scattered, for,
See all these years, it has not died.
And if indeed, as I dare think,
You cannot push this patient flame,
By any breath your lungs could store,
Even for a moment to the floor
To crawl there, even for a moment crawl,
What can you mix for me to drink
That shall deflect me? What you do
Is either malice, crude defense
Of ego, or indifference:
I know these things as well as you;
You do not dazzle me at all—
Some love, and some simplicity,
Might well have been the death of me—
Scheme | ABABCDEED FXEEGFCXXCG BB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 110111101 110111110 111101001 11110111 11011111 01011101 11100101 11110101 11111111 01011111 11011101 11011111 101010101 1111010101 11111111 11011111 11010101 11010100 11111111 11110111 11010100 11110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 738 |
Words | 148 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 9, 11, 2 |
Lines Amount | 22 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 191 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 49 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 147 Views
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"Not Even My Pride Shall Suffer Much" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9408/not-even-my-pride-shall-suffer-much>.
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