Analysis of Mist In The Valley

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



These hills, to hurt me more,
That am hurt already enough,—
Having left the sea behind,
Having turned suddenly and left the shore
That I had loved beyond all words, even a song's words, to
convey,

And built me a house on upland acres,
Sweet with the pinxter, bright and rough
With the rusty blackbird long before the winter's done,
But smelling never of bayberry hot in the sun,
Nor ever loud with the pounding of the long white breakers,—

These hills, beneath the October moon,
Sit in the valley white with mist
Like islands in a quiet bay,

Jut out from shore into the mist,
Wooded with poplar dark as pine,
Like points of land into a quiet bay.

(Just in the way
The harbour met the bay)

Stricken too sore for tears,
I stand, remembering the Islands and the sea's lost sound—
Life at its best no longer than the sand-peep's cry,
And I two years, two years,
Tilling an upland ground!


Scheme ABXAXC DBEED XFC FXC CC XGXXG
Poetic Form
Metre 111111 11101001 1010101 1011000101 11110111100111 01 0110111010 1101101 1010101010101 11010111001 11011010101110 110100101 10010111 11000101 11110101 10110111 1111010101 1001 010101 101111 11010001000111 111111010111 011111 101101
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 878
Words 168
Sentences 3
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 6, 5, 3, 3, 2, 5
Lines Amount 24
Letters per line (avg) 29
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 114
Words per stanza (avg) 27
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 20, 2023

51 sec read
159

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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