Analysis of Ashes Of Life

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



Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
   Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
     here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
   Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
   This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,—
   There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,—and the neighbors knock and
     borrow,
   And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
   There's this little street and this little house.


Scheme AXXAX BCBC XDEDE
Poetic Form
Metre 1110110011101 111011101110 1 1111010101101 1110101111 1110110111111 1111111110111 11011101110111 1101010111111 111011001010 1 01110101010101 0110011001100110 1110101101
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 698
Words 137
Sentences 8
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 5
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 36
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 168
Words per stanza (avg) 43
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

42 sec read
239

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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