Edna St Vincent Millay
Done by William and Napon

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not from beauties passed away
From field to thicket as the years goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
When the swift mind beholds at every turn.

February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950
• American lyrical poet and playwright feminist
• Received the Pulitzer
Prize for Poetry in 1923
(the first woman to win the award for poetry)
• known for her activism and her many love affairs

 She had relationships with several fellow students during her time in college
 In 1923 she married 43-year-old Eugen Jan
Boissevain, a lawyer she met at college
 Both Millay and Boissevain had other lovers throughout their twenty-six-year marriage
 Millay's most significant relationship during this time was with the poet George Dillon, who was fourteen years her junior, and for whom she wrote a number of her sonnets.

• It is clearly shown that
Millay has not been successful in her love life.
• Neither did her parents: her parents got divorced when
Millay was 12 years old
• These may be some of the reasons why Millay’s perspective on love is so negative, and may have influenced her to express those feelings in “Sonnet
29.”

• A form of poem that originated in Europe, mainly
Italy
• “Sonnet" derives only from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning
"little song" or "little sound"
• It is poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure containing:
Octave and Sestet
• “Sonnet 29” is a Shakespearian (or English with four quatrains and a rhyming couplet at the end)

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•

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• “Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look at me with love”
• These lines suggest the shallowness of love. The man may have once loved and desired Millay, but not anymore.
• This expresses Millay’s disapproval of love as it has seemingly drastic emotional repercussions on woman. Millay suggests here that the passing of love or the end of a man’s desire is a natural part of human life.

• Repetition of “Pity me not” enforces the reader that they should in no way feel guilty about anything or feel bad for her
• “Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field to thicket as the year goes by”
• A field is still fresh, lively, and beautiful. In contrast a thicket is an overgrown and uncared patch of land full of weeds.
• In this metaphor, the author hints on the aging process and the fact that she thinks superficial love will disappear with the onset of ageing
• The author does not want us to pity her for her lost love

• Cyclical forces of nature are used as a metaphor for her version of the cycle of love that concludes a man’s love for a woman always ends
• “Pity me not the waning of the moon”
• Moonlight is a sensuous setting as a base for her love relationships. “Waning” refers to fading. The waning of the moon can be seen as a loss of romance.
• This quote reinforces the idea of love as cyclical and doomed to fade with time. As a moon waxes and wanes, love relationships will germinate and die

• Paradoxical as she moves from the rational mind to the emotional heart.
• “Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
When the swift mind beholds at every turn”
• This personification shows that even though she knows that she should not be heartbroken as she was expecting this to happen, she still feels anguish and heart‐broken.
• The use of paradox and the uses “Pity me” instead of
“Pity me not” and also uses a rhyming couplet in contrast from the previous lines allows Millay to give a significant ending to the poem to express her true emotional pain, and is asking for sympathy

• Both express intense and powerful emotions about love
• They are written in the “Sonnet” form by female poets about their love life
• Audience
• Sonnet 29- general audience (Millay wants to convince the reader that love does not last)
• Sonnet 43- audience of one as Browning shows her intense love for her husband through the poem (the reader is an outsider in the poem)
• Repetition is used in both poems…
• Sonnet 29: “Pity me not”
• Sonnet 43: “I love thee”
• The repetition used in each poem show an direct contrast of each of the poet’s view on love

• Sonnet 43, Elizabeth Barrett
Browning expresses her unconditional love that not even death can overcome through the use of abstract images to present a powerful view of her feelings
• “I shall but love thee better after my death”
• This shows that their love is eternal and never ending.
Not even death can overcome the powerful love they have for each other.

• Sonnet 29, the poet illustrates her agony of her past relationship through the comparison of love with nature
• “This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails”
• The poet indicates that she has known that her love is going to end. She uses metaphor to create a violent imagery comparing love to the wide blossom that the wind assails.
• The blossom represents the beauty and liveliness of love. Wind assails shows the unpredictability of nature’s cold and brutal attacking.
• Destiny is unpredictable. Love and the emotions involved are not within human control and that it can be crushed easily.