Analysis of Pastoral

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



If it were only still!—
With far away the shrill
Crying of a cock;
Or the shaken bell
From a cow's throat
Moving through the bushes;
Or the soft shock
Of wizened apples falling
From an old tree
In a forgotten orchard
Upon the hilly rock!

Oh, grey hill,
Where the grazing herd
Licks the purple blossom,
Crops the spiky weed!
Oh, stony pasture,
Where the tall mullein
Stands up so sturdy
On its little seed!


Scheme AABXXXBXCDB ADXEXXCE
Poetic Form
Metre 110101 110101 10101 10101 1011 101010 1011 1101010 1111 0001010 010101 111 10101 101010 10101 11010 1011 11110 11101
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 397
Words 79
Sentences 5
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 11, 8
Lines Amount 19
Letters per line (avg) 17
Words per line (avg) 4
Letters per stanza (avg) 159
Words per stanza (avg) 38
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 27, 2023

24 sec read
376

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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