Analysis of Sonnet 04: Not In This Chamber Only At My Birth
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
Not in this chamber only at my birth—
When the long hours of that mysterious night
Were over, and the morning was in sight—
I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth
I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;
And never shall one room contain me quite
Who in so many rooms first saw the light,
Child of all mothers, native of the earth.
So is no warmth for me at any fire
To-day, when the world's fire has burned so low;
I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,
At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong,
And straighten back in weariness, and long
To gather up my little gods and go.
Scheme | ABBAABBA CDCEED |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011010111 101101101001 0100010101 1110110101 11111100101 0101110111 1011011101 1111010101 11111111010 11101101111 11101101010 1111111111 0101010001 1101110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 624 |
Words | 120 |
Sentences | 3 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 236 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 59 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 36 sec read
- 55 Views
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"Sonnet 04: Not In This Chamber Only At My Birth" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9429/sonnet-04%3A-not-in-this-chamber-only-at-my-birth>.
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