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 Views
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"And do you think that love itself" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/9344/and-do-you-think-that-love-itself>.
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