Analysis of The Plaid Dress
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
Strong sun, that bleach
The curtains of my room, can you not render
Colourless this dress I wear?—
This violent plaid
Of purple angers and red shames; the yellow stripe
Of thin but valid treacheries; the flashy green of kind deeds done
Through indolence high judgments given here in haste;
The recurring checker of the serious breach of taste?
No more uncoloured than unmade,
I fear, can be this garment that I may not doff;
Confession does not strip it off,
To send me homeward eased and bare;
All through the formal, unoffending evening, under the clean
Bright hair,
Lining the subtle gown. . .it is not seen,
But it is there.
Scheme | XXAXXXBB XCCA DADA |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111 01011111110 11111 11001 110100110101 11110101011111 1111010101 00101010100111 111101 111111011111 01011111 11110101 110101101001 11 1001011111 1111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 625 |
Words | 114 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 16 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 165 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 37 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 34 sec read
- 114 Views
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"The Plaid Dress" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9473/the-plaid-dress>.
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