Love Not All

“Women have loved before as I love now/ At least, in lively chronicles of the past-” (lines 1-2). These opening lines seem to simultaneously show love as something old, trite, and exciting. In “[Women have loved before as I love now]”, Edna St. Vincent Millay describes the ancient love stories of the past and how she relates to them. She writes how she used to seek out the parts which focused on love, describing the love of past women as something passionate and strong. Millay also goes on to say that out of all the women alive, she feels that only she connects with the love of the past, and that only she truly feels love. “[Women have loved before as I love now]” shows that passionate love is a joyful burden that is shared by both sexes.

Though written in a very light and simple manner, the poem comes across as something very profound, laden with meaning through its incongruities. The persona, wanting to see something, often goes to the well and looks down at the water to see it. This certain search below the water's surface can be compared to man's search beneath the human experience for meaning, for certainty.

The first stanza depicts two main elements: metaphors and synecdoche’s. The first two lines of the poem set the stage for what this poem is about, “When my heart is not in my mouth, it’s in your hands” (line 1-2). This allows the reader to understand that this man’s heart lies with this woman and that she has complete control over it. This line also describes a synecdoche in which the woman is not actually holding a live organ in her hands as the reader would

The tone of despair and loneliness is carried on to the proceeding stanzas, and is more evident in the last two. By saying that “Water limpid as the solitudes that flee

It is important to note that the first eight lines are a part of a single sentence. This is important because it means that if we remove the repeated poetic verse found within these lines, we discover that Millay is simply saying “Love is not all… / Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone” (1-8) . This is a justifiable conclusion because after the words “Love is not all” the author uses a colon, which means that the lines following are simply a definition for what she means by “Love is not all” (1) . When put in such simple terms, it’s easy to see how this is almost indistinguishable from saying, “Love is not all, but it would be better to be dead than not have it.”

In Graveyard Blues by Natasha Trethewey, the scene of her mother’s funeral is depicted. This was when Trethewey was 17, after her stepfather had killed her mother. Through the use of a controlled structuring of lineation throughout the poem, Trethewey conveys a calm tone. Also, by using word choices and repetition Trethewey is able to depict a state of grief. Finally, through the use of weather, she conveys a feeling of all – encompassing sadness.

The poem suddenly becomes much darker in the last stanza and a Billy Collins explains how teachers, students or general readers of poetry ‘torture’ a poem by being what he believes is cruelly analytical. He says, “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it”. Here, the poem is being personified yet again and this brings about an almost human connection between the reader and the poem. This use of personification is effective as it makes the

This poem can be a reminder and an expression that love is simply unfair and unjust. It conveys how dangerous love can be and how toxic it actually is. Eday uses words throughout the poem that do not just create an image for the reader, but also create a

Through the use of poetic devices such as repetition or alliteration, the author originally describes what love is not capable of providing and defines love as unnecessary but by the end of the poem, the author reveals that love has some value.

The poem contains two stanzas with two different settings. One might not know much about the first stanza; however, in the second one the speaker is next to an ocean, perhaps, at a beach. So, while the first stanza symbolizes the mindset of the speaker, the inner dream, the second stanza symbolizes the outer dream which is what we see; life. The poem

“Breaking the surface, shatter an old silence” evokes a sense of commotion as if everything was so silent you could hear a pin drop and all of a sudden there was excitement. This shows that the previous poems she read mean nothing close to what the poems she is reading now. This description provides a distinction between the previous poem she read and this current one. “The lake flowed out again, the swans, the darkening sky”(32-33) shows that there is stuff happening compared to the silence before. The darkening sky causes the girl to lose her doubts further showing how powerful this rush is. The figurative language of describing the swans as having question mark necks shows that the girl may be having allusions as a side effect of how much she is being impacted by the poem. The rush she feels from how interested she is in in poems causes her to lose her morals and her mind for a few moments. The girl is looking at the swans and is thinking about stealing the book “my breath came quickly, thinking it over- I had no money, no one was looking”(39-40). The question mark necks show how truly she was uncertain on what to

Millay throughout her poem utilizes symbolism which sets the tone of loneliness and nostalgia, making it easier for the reader to grasp the meaning of the poem. The first two lines of the poem, “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why, / I have forgotten, and what arms have lain” (Millay 1-2) the speaker explains in a subtle way about her former lovers she has now forgotten. “Under my head till morning; but the rain/ Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh/ Upon the glass and listen for reply,” (Millay 3-5) the speaker uses symbolism on her former lovers as ghosts that are tapping and can be interpreted as them prompting her memories. “And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain/ For unremembered lads that not

The second stanza begins with a repeating phrase from the first two lines of the poem, “You knew what you had to do”. This repetition reinforces the determination the speaker wants the reader to understand; the purpose of one’s life has been finally found. The following three lines include personification of the “wind” as it “pried… at the very foundations”. The “wind” is seen as a symbol, representing obstacles and hardships one experiences throughout life. These lines reveal how these obstacles and challenges poked all the way through one’s breaking point. Then the speaker adds, “though their melancholy was terrible”, as if other people’s negativity pushes one down, but one is still determined to thrive. The second stanza concludes with

The Poem begins with a personification of death as "kindly" (3). By doing this, the speaker introduces a portrayal on death that might have conflictions. Most of the times, death has a negative connotation. Whether it is an inevitable or tragic view, it opposes to what is seen in the poem. The speaker accepts death as a friendly invitation when the time is right, rather than something that is bound to happen. The speaker then joins immortality, personified as a passenger in a carriage. Immortality simply cannot be a passenger as it is a non-living thing. The reasoning for this could be that immortality ties together the link between the speaker and death, ultimately introducing the voyage to come. The first stanza sets a precedent of a meter to follow throughout most of the poem. The first line contains eight

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnet IV” follows many of the conventions of the traditional Petrarchan sonnet. It follows the traditional rhyming scheme and octet, sestet structure. However it challenges the conventions of the typical subject of the Italian sonnet, unrequited love. In the octet at the beginning of the poem Millay uses images that give a sense of transience and in the ending sestet of the sonnet she contrasts the sense of impermanence given earlier with the idea that the speaker cannot forget the smiles and words of their ex-lover. This contrast between permanence and transience illustrates Millay’s interest in a fugacious relationship with everlasting memories. After further analysis of Millay’s highly structured rhyming scheme which puts emphasis on the last words of each line. She uses these words to further express her interest in exploring impermanent relationships by using words that are associated with an end or death.