When the Year grows Old

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



I cannot but remember
   When the year grows old --
October -- November --
   How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
   Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
   With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
   Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
   Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
   That I wish I could forget --
The look of a scared thing
   Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
   The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
   Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
   And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
   Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
   When the year grows old --
October -- November --
   How she disliked the cold!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

42 sec read
112

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABAB xcdc xexe afxf xdxd aaxa ABAB
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 772
Words 143
Stanzas 7
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4

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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