Analysis of Afternoon on a Hill

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



I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
   With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
   And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
   Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
   And then start down!


Scheme XAXA XBXB XCXC
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 111011 1001 11101010 0111 1111101 1101 1011101 0011 0110111 1101 1111111 0111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 324
Words 63
Sentences 5
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 19
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 77
Words per stanza (avg) 20
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 27, 2023

18 sec read
431

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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