viernes, 7 de septiembre de 2012

Student essays on Sonnets 29 and a little on 43



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.

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