Analysis of Sonnets 04: Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended

Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)



Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.


Scheme ABBAABBACDCDCD
Poetic Form
Metre 1001101110 0101010111 1101010101 0001101010 11011010 010110101 1101110011 010111111010 010110111 1101111101 01000101001 0111000111 1011110101 0101100111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 553
Words 111
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 429
Words per stanza (avg) 107
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 03, 2023

33 sec read
124

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…

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