Analysis of Exiled
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.
Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;
Always I climbed the wave at morning,
Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
Stricken with noise, confused with light.
If I could hear the green piles groaning
Under the windy wooden piers,
See once again the bobbing barrels,
And the black sticks that fence the weirs,
If I could see the weedy mussels
Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,
Hear once again the hungry crying
Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,
Feel once again the shanty straining
Under the turning of the tide,
Fear once again the rising freshet,
Dread the bell in the fog outside,—
I should be happy,—that was happy
All day long on the coast of Maine!
I have a need to hold and handle
Shells and anchors and ships again!
I should be happy, that am happy
Never at all since I came here.
I am too long away from water.
I have a need of water near.
Scheme | XABA CDED EAXA FGXG FXHC HHFH FIEI AXBX AXXX |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (56%) |
Metre | 101111110 11011111 1111011010 110101001 100101010 10110101 100110011 10111111 1010111 100110101 100101011 10010111 11101110 10111111 111101110 10110111 111101110 10010101 110101010 00111101 111101010 1010101 110101010 10110101 110101010 10010101 11010101 10100111 111101110 11110111 110111010 10100101 111101110 10111111 111101110 11011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 1,279 |
Words | 245 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 9 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 36 |
Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 114 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 22, 2023
- 1:13 min read
- 191 Views
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"Exiled" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9369/exiled>.
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