Analysis of The Philosopher

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



And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell,—
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?


Scheme ABCB ADED XEXE CFXF
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 01111101 111101 11011111 110111 01111101 110111 111100101 010101 110110101 010111 01111111 011011 11011101 110111 01111111 110011
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 465
Words 102
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 89
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 18, 2023

31 sec read
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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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