Analysis of Alms
Edna St Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland, Maine) – 1950 ( Austerlitz, New York)
My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go;
But it is winter with your love,
The sashes are beset with snow.
I light the lamp and lay the cloth,
I blow the coals to blaze again;
But it is winter with your love,
The frost is thick upon the pane.
I know a winter when it comes:
The leaves are listless on the boughs;
I watched your love a little while,
And brought my plants into the house.
I water them and turn them south,
I snap the dead brown from the stem;
But it is winter with your love,--
I only tend and water them.
There was a time I stood and watched
The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray;
I loved the beggar that I fed,
I cared for what he had to say,
I stood and watched him out of sight;
Today I reach around the door
And set a bowl upon the step;
My heart is what it was before,
But it is winter with your love;
I scatter crumbs upon the sill,
And close the window,--and the birds
May take or leave them, as they will.
Scheme | AbCb xxCx xxxx xdCd xexe xaxA Cfxf |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (71%) |
Metre | 11111101 01110101 11110111 01010111 11010101 11011101 11110111 01110101 11010111 01110101 11110101 01110101 11010111 11011101 11110111 11010101 11011101 01110101 11010111 11111111 11011111 01110101 01010101 11111101 11110111 11010101 01010001 11111111 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 944 |
Words | 203 |
Sentences | 5 |
Stanzas | 7 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 26 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 104 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:00 min read
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"Alms" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/55004/alms>.
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