Edna St. David Millay

The poem that was recited by myself during class is I Shall Forget You Presently, My Dear written by the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. This poems title and first line are exactly the same; the significance of the poem title in which I chose is that it sets up the entire tone of the poem which starts of with being very straightforward. An example is through the first five words of the title/ first line of the poem, "I shall forget you presently", which can be interpreted as "I will lose hold of you soon, my dear". The title and first line also addresses the most important word in the poem which is "forget". Looking into the etymology of the word forget, it has been used in the context of losing ones hold on something. Using that etymology …show more content…
Although it is very evident from the first line that the author was addressing her lover. Edna was known for having feminist ideals so with this poem I believe that who Edna was as a person, prompted this poem which presents the woman as being a player in the love game rather than just being a pawn in the game of love. Within the poem it is learned that the author writes with a strong female perspective which would be assumed because the author is in fact a female. But it is documented that Edna St. Vincent Millay was known to write about love and her feministic views on the world. Not only that, but within the poem it points to the fact that love is very short lived. Love is so short, by nature, that you have to cherish every moment of the love that is around. Throughout the poem I would say that the author presents emotions of frustration with love and nature. In lines nine and ten, "I would indeed love were longer-lived, and oaths were not so brittle as they are", could point to the fact that Edna wants love to be longer and breakable. In line eleven, "but so it is, and nature has contrived", points to the fact that Edna cannot do anything about he short lived love because of nature and its obvious planning of a short lived love. This poem really points out the fact that the author personalize's her …show more content…
Lines one through four compose the first quatrain, lines five through eight compose the second quatrain, lines nine through twelve compose the last quatrain, and finally the last two lines put together the couplet. This poem has a Shakespearean rhyme scheme which is explained by the matching of end rhymes 'ababcdcdefefgg'. Almost all exact end rhymes excluding lines nine and eleven which are eye rhymes. Line three is a great, simple example of iambic pentameter. The syllables are grouped together in pairs in which the first syllable is unstressed followed by the stressed syllable. In contrast line twelve is an example of an unstressed syllable at the beginning of the line with a dactylic trimeter to follow. The word 'to' remains unstressed, all while it is followed by three groupings of one stressed syllable and two unstressed