Analysis of Afternoon On A Hill

Edna St Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland, Maine) – 1950 ( Austerlitz, New York)



I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!


Scheme XAXA XBXB XCXC
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 111011 1001 11101010 0111 1111101 1101 1011101 0011 0110111 1101 1111111 0111
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 293
Words 63
Sentences 4
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 12
Letters per line (avg) 19
Words per line (avg) 5
Letters per stanza (avg) 77
Words per stanza (avg) 20
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 26, 2023

18 sec read
45

Edna St Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical 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. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work.  more…

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