Analysis of And do you think that love itself

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



And do you think that love itself,
Living in such an ugly house,
Can prosper long?
             We meet and part;
Our talk is all of heres and nows,
Our conduct likewise; in no act
Is any future, any past;
Under our sly, unspoken pact,
I KNOW with whom I saw you last,
But I say nothing; and you know
At six-fifteen to whom I go—
Can even love be treated so?

I KNOW, but I do not insist,
Having stealth and tact, thought not enough,
What hour your eye is on your wrist.

No wild appeal, no mild rebuff
Deflates the hour, leaves the wine flat—

Yet if YOU drop the picked-up book
To intercept my clockward look—
Tell me, can love go on like that?

Even the bored, insulted heart,
That signed so long and tight a lease,
Can BREAK it CONTRACT, slump in peace.


Scheme XAXBACDCDEEE FGF GH IIH BJJ
Poetic Form
Metre 01111101 10011101 1101 1101 101111101 10011011 11010101 101010101 11111111 11110011 11011111 11011101 11111101 101011101 110111111 11011101 10101011 11110111 101111 11111111 10010101 11110101 1111101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 749
Words 148
Sentences 6
Stanzas 5
Stanza Lengths 12, 3, 2, 3, 3
Lines Amount 23
Letters per line (avg) 24
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 113
Words per stanza (avg) 29
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

44 sec read
103

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…

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