Sonnet 29 is a 14 lined poem written by
Edna St Vincent Millay. Sonnet 29 is one of the Sonnets from Sonnets of the
Portuguese. Edna St Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet. She was born
in 1892 and died in 1950. Sonnet 29 is basically about how the person she loves
doesn’t love her anymore and how he shouldn’t pity her except that he doesn’t
love her.
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field to thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea.
These 5 lines are about how she is telling ‘him’ the guy she loves that he
should not pity her. That even when she is going through some hard times he
should not pity her. This to me shows how much she loves him because even
though he doesn’t love her she still wants him to be happy in the sense that he
won’t feel bad.
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so
soon.
And you no longer look with love on me.
Here she is saying even again that she will still love him even if he doesn’t.
these 2 lines also tells the reader that she loves him.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails.
Here to me she is saying that her love is gone meaning him. I think this
because to me by saying the blossom which the wind assails means that her love
is gone.
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.
These last 4 lines are the highlight of the poem. They are the most dramatic
and meaningful. The first two lines she again shows how much she loves him but
then in the last two lines she shows that she is angry and upset that he left
her or no longer loves her. She is showing this by saying that he should pity
her. There is this effect because in the beginning of the poem she is
explaining how he shouldn’t pity her but know she just wants him to feel her
sorrow and agony.
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The poem is written in a Shakespearean Sonnet form. There are 14 lines each
with 10 syllables. She also wrote it in the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean
Sonnet would be written in. A Rhythm can easily be made up to go along with
this poem. The diction of this poem is very simple but each line can be
interpreted in many ways. It is clear from the beginning that it is about love
but once you read what’s implied then it starts making sense. Knowing Edna’s
past and life helps as it makes it easier to understand this poem. “Than the
wide blossom which the wind assails.” This quote puts an image in my head of a
flower flying away with the wind. Lots of images are made in my mind when I
read this poem. Especially when she goes on about how he should pity her and
about the sea and all the natural disasters she talks about.
This poem can be easily compared with Sonnet 43 written by Elizabeth Barret
Browning. They are both about love. They are both about the love they have lost
or don’t have and want back so bad. Both of these poems are written by females
and in both of them they want LOVE. To me they are both two females who have
been waiting for their Prince Charming to long.
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This poem was interesting. Even though I don’t really like it when people make
a huge fuss when they don’t have something they want. In a way its like Edna
wants us to pity her. But then again she wrote this poem no for us to read but
to express her love so it’s the way you see it. I enjoyed reading it and trying
to decipher what ever she means which in the end I think i did quite well.
There is so much to write about this poem.
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Sonnet #29 was written by Edna St. Vincent
Millay. It is about her love towards “You”, being the person she loves, not the
actual reader. Although, this seems as if it wasn’t written for the person as
it talks about his love as a very bad way to love. One of the key themes of
this poem is love, how he loves (Loved) her.
In the beginning she tells him not pity her because the sun goes down, because
fields grow to thickets, the tide goes out and that the moon gets smaller. All
of these things are natural occurrences and all undo themselves. The moon gets
larger, the tide comes back and the sun will come back up. She also says not to
pity her because a man’s love disappears quickly. After the 8th line, the Volta, it starts to get a bit worse after and talking
about how the tide destroys and causes wreckage. Eventually she says to pity
her because her mind knew that his love would disappear but her heart told her
to love him.
When she says that the tide goes out and the sun goes down she seems to be
implying that his love is like this but all of those things will come back, the
sun comes back up. So she is saying that a man’s love is like the tide, it
comes and goes. We can imply that he does not love her anymore, but she loves
him. Later on she talks about how things like the tide are destructive, so she
is hinting that love, being like the tide, is destructive. Throughout she talks
as if he is bad for letting his love go away, but in the end she says that it
seems to be her own fault, for letting her heart love in the first place.
This is a Petrarchan Sonnet meaning it has 14 lines, 10 syllables per line. The
rhyme scheme is A B A B C D C D E F E F G G. The first two lines are one
sentence talking about one thing not to pity her for, and the same for the next
two and then it goes onto saying ‘Nor’ for the fact that the tide goes out and
that a man’s love disappears so soon. At the Volta
she goes from talking about these things to talking about how some of these
things, like love are destructive. The way she says don’t pity her for
something, and then explains that something gives it a strange feeling but is
seems like it is necessary for the rhyming to work.
This is very similar poem to Sonnet #43 by Elizabeth Barret Browning. They both
talk about love but Sonnet #43 talks about how she loves the person and Sonnet
#29 is about how someone else doesn’t love her anymore. In Sonnet #43 this it
was written as a secret poem to a lover while this poem seems to be openly
confronting the reader about something like a break up. They both seem to be in
a sort of list form, with 2 lines per each item and they are of course listing
different things.
I think that this poem was very well written but I don’t like what the writer
was saying. She seems to say that only men fall out of love and seems to be
implying that women never do, which I would doubt. Although I still liked how
the poem was written.
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‘Sonnet 29’ is written by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and
it tells us about how she loves “You” and You means the person she loves and
that he does not love her the same way. The poem seems to be written as though
she is talking about how this person’s love for her is wrong. One of the key themes
to this poem is ‘Love’ as she mentions how he does not love her like before.
In the beginning she starts off by saying that you should Not Pity Her for the
sun coming up, the fields grow into thickets at the end of the year, that the
moon grows smaller, and that the tide goes out to sea. A similar aspect of
these lines is that they are all Natural Occurrences and that they all cancel
each other out since the sun goes down, thickets get cut down back into fields,
the moon grows larger and the tide comes back in. She also says to Pity Her not
for a man’s desire is hushed so quickly, the poem takes a slight turn when
after the 8th line she talks about how his love is destroying things, as the
wind blows away the blossoms and the great tide destroys and bring wreckage
upon the shore. Near the end she then says to Pity Her for that her Heart is
slow to learn that love is not always what it seems to be and that her mind
always knew this.
When she says “From field to thicket as the year goes by” she could mean that
since the field turns into a thicket it doesn’t look beautiful as if it were a
field, when she mentions how the sun goes up, you know that the sun will come
down again so this might imply that love can go ‘Up’ or ‘Down’ or in other
words Love can be good or it can be bad. When she says “Nor that a man’s desire
is hushed so soon.” She is saying that even though a man’s desire is hushed so
soon it is not hushed all at once, it simply takes its time. At the end she
says that her heart was slow to learn where as her mind always knew that he did
not love her the same way, but the heart doesn’t want to believe that and
that’s why she says to Pity Her for that reason.
This is a Petrarchan Sonnet, so the Rhyming pattern is
A,B,A,B,C,D,C,D,E,F,E,F,G,G and it has 10 syllables in each line. The poem uses
a lot of imagery especially in the beginning as she describes the natural
occurrences in detail so that you can get an idea of what is happening, like
“Pity me not the waning of the moon, Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea.”
The poem uses “Nor” and “Pity Me/Not” quite a few times and this shows that she
is saying a long list if things not to pity her for, like “Nor that a man’s
desire is hushed so soon.” I do not think that this poem is fast as the it is
explaining how his love is no longer what it used to be.
This Poem is quite similar to the poem of Elizabeth Barret Browning’s Sonnet
#43, as they both talk about love but, Sonnet #43 talks more of how She
(Elizabeth) loves another person, where as Sonnet #29 talks more of how His
love to Her (Edna) and both of the poems use a list form to describe the ways
in which love is used.
As I said before I do not like these kind of poems that much but I thought that
it was well written and that it explains many of the natural occurrences in
such a detail that I could imagine them immediately . All in all I did like
this poem as it interested me, perhaps reading more might change my ways of
thinking about them.
This poem was written as a Shakespearean
sonnet, with the rhyme scheme being as ababcdcdefefgg, and 10 syllables per
line. The poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, also makes the poem seem rather dark
and depressing with the words/diction that she had used. For the first 7 lines,
you can picture most of what she is saying. For example, in line 1 ‘Pity me not
because the light of day, At close of day no longer walks the sky;’ it gives
the image of a sun rising and then finally setting at the end of the day. That
goes the same for lines three, four, five, and six. For lines three and four,
she paints the image of a field that dies or becomes dried out over time into
your mind. In lines five and six, it makes you think about how the moon gets
smaller at certain times of the month, and how the ‘ebbing tide goes out to
sea.’ The poem also gives of the image of a woman in unrequited love.
The literature that I would pair it with would be Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barret
Browning, because they are both talking about love in some way. But they are
talking about it in two different ways. Millay is talking about the man’s love
towards her, while Browning is talking about her love towards ‘him’ or ‘thee’.
At first glance, without knowing about the background information, they could
both be about an unrequited love. This, for Elizabeth Browning, was true at the
beginning, while Millay is talking about how the one she loved fell out of love
with her. So, in a way, the poems are complete opposites. Yet by knowing one,
you can sort of understand the other more. I see Sonnet 43 as a more positive
or ‘happy’ version of sonnet 29, which is quite negative.
Whenever I think of Sonnet 29, I instantly have a dark image in my mind, or a
more negative one. The images that it sends to me is mostly of nature with the
first seven lines, and I think it is quite successful with what it was set out
to do. It made me feel rather sorry for Millay, which is what the poem seemed
to be made to do.
