Ashes Of Life

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



Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;
   Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were
     here!
But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
   Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;
   This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,—
   There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,—and the neighbors knock and
     borrow,
   And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
   There's this little street and this little house.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

42 sec read
237

Quick analysis:

Scheme AXXAX BCBC XDEDE
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 698
Words 137
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 5, 4, 5

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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