Analysis of The Fledgling

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



So, art thou feahered, art thou flown,
Thou naked thing?—and canst alone
Upon the unsolid summer air
Sustain thyself, and prosper there?
Shall  no more with anxious note
Advise thee  through the happy day,
Thrusting the worm into thy throat,
Bearing thine excrement away?
Alas, I think I see thee yet,
Perched on the windy parapet,
Defer thy flight a moment still
To clean thy wing with careful bill.
And thou are feathered, thou art flown;
And hast a project of thine own.


Scheme AABBCDCDEEFFAA
Poetic Form
Metre 1111111 11010101 0101101 0110101 1111101 01110101 10010111 10110001 01111111 1101010 01110101 11111101 01110111 01010111
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 470
Words 86
Sentences 6
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 372
Words per stanza (avg) 85
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

25 sec read
314

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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    Published in 1954, "Fighting Terms" was the first collection of poems by which poet?
    A Ted Hughes
    B Sylvia Plath
    C Thom Gunn
    D Philip Larkin