Analysis of Sonnet (Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now)
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past—
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
Much to their cost invaded—here and there,
Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest,
I find some woman bearing as I bear
Love like a burning city in the breast.
I think however that of all alive
I only in such utter, ancient way
Do suffer love; in me alone survive
The unregenerate passions of a day
When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread,
Heedless and willful, took their knights to bed.
| Scheme | ABABCDCDEFEFGG |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | Shakespearean sonnet |
| Metre | 1011011111 11010100101 1101010101 1101010101 1111010101 10010011001 1111010111 1101010001 111011101 1100110101 1101010101 0110101 11001110101 101011111 |
| Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
| Characters | 554 |
| Words | 105 |
| Sentences | 3 |
| Stanzas | 1 |
| Stanza Lengths | 14 |
| Lines Amount | 14 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
| Words per line (avg) | 7 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 439 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 103 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 31 sec read
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"Sonnet (Women Have Loved Before As I Love Now)" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9425/sonnet-%28women-have-loved-before-as-i-love-now%29>.
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