Analysis of Sonnet 02: Time Does Not Bring Relief; You All Have Lied

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



Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
   Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
   I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
   And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
   But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide

There are a hundred places where I fear
   To go,—so with his memory they brim
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
   And so stand stricken, so remembering him!


Scheme ABBAABBA XCDDXC
Poetic Form
Metre 1111011111 1111111111 1110010101 1111010101 01111100101 01111101001 1111010101 1111011101 1101010111 1111110011 01001011101 1101111111 11111100111 01110101001
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 610
Words 120
Sentences 4
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 8, 6
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 231
Words per stanza (avg) 58
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

36 sec read
142

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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