Analysis of Sweet Love, Sweet Thorn, When Lightly To My Heart

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



Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart
I took your thrust, whereby I since am slain,
And lie disheveled in the grass apart,
A sodden thing bedrenched by tears and rain,
While rainy evening drips to misty night,
And misty night to cloudy morning clears,
And clouds disperse across the gathering light,
And birds grow noisy, and the sun appears
Had I bethought me then, sweet love, sweet thorn,
How sharp an anguish even at the best,
When all's requited and the future sworn,
The happy Hour can leave within the breast,
I had not so come running at the call
Of one whoe loves me little, if at all.


Scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG
Poetic Form Shakespearean sonnet 
Metre 1111110111 1111011111 0101000101 010111101 1101011101 0101110101 01010101001 0111000101 111111111 1111010101 11100101 01010110101 1111110101 1111110111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 601
Words 114
Sentences 2
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 476
Words per stanza (avg) 112
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

34 sec read
138

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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