Analysis of Sonnet I: Thou art not lovelier than lilacs

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



Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no,
  Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
  Than small white single poppies,--I can bear
Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though
From left to right, not knowing where to go,
  I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there
  Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear
So has it been with mist,--with moonlight so.
Like him who day by day unto his draught
  Of delicate poison adds him one drop more
Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,
Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed
  Each hour more deeply than the hour before,
I drink--and live--what has destroyed some men.


Scheme ABBAABBACDECDE
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111 110011111 1111010111 1101110111 1111110111 1111011111 1101011111 111111111 1111111011 11001011111 1111010111 10101110111 110110101001 1101110111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 628
Words 116
Sentences 3
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 471
Words per stanza (avg) 111
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 16, 2023

34 sec read
163

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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