Analysis of Sonnets 09: Let You Not Say Of Me When I Am Old
Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)
Let you not say of me when I am old,
In pretty worship of my withered hands
Forgetting who I am, and how the sands
Of such a life as mine run red and gold
Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold,
Here walketh passionless age!"—for there expands
A curious superstition in these lands,
And by its leave some weightless tales are told.
In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;
I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;
Impious no less in ruin than in strength,
When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,
Let you not say, "Upon this reverend site
The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer."
Scheme | ABBAABBA CDEECD |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1111111111 0101011101 0101110101 1101111101 101010010101 11111101 0100010011 0111110111 011111101 1101110101 01011010101 1111010111 11110111001 0101011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 603 |
Words | 119 |
Sentences | 4 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 6 |
Lines Amount | 14 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 237 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 58 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 35 sec read
- 85 Views
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