Analysis of When the Year grows Old
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
I cannot but remember
When the year grows old --
October -- November --
How she disliked the cold!
She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.
And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound,
She had a look about her
That I wish I could forget --
The look of a scared thing
Sitting in a net!
Oh, beautiful at nightfall
The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
Rubbing to and fro!
But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!
I cannot but remember
When the year grows old --
October -- November --
How she disliked the cold!
Scheme | ABAB xcdc xexe afxf xdxd aaxa ABAB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (86%) |
Metre | 1101010 10111 010010 110101 1111010 110101 011010 101011 0101011 010101 0010010 101001 1101010 1111101 011011 10001 110011 01101 0100011 10101 10101010 00111 00101010 010010 1101010 10111 010010 110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic trimeter |
Characters | 772 |
Words | 143 |
Sentences | 8 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 20 |
Words per line (avg) | 5 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 79 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 20 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 114 Views
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