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

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism more…

All Edna St. Vincent Millay poems | Edna St. Vincent Millay Books

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