"Four Sonnets"

"Four Sonnets"

Sonnet I

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,

And drag me at your chariot till I die, —

Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts! —

Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie

Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,

Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,

Who still am free, unto no querulous care

A fool, and in no temple worshiper!

I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire,

Lifted my face into its puny rain,

Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire

As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!

(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,

Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

Sonnet II

I think I should have loved you presently,

And given in earnest words I flung in jest;

And lifted honest eyes for you to see,

And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;

And all my pretty follies flung aside

That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,

Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,

Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.

I, that had been to you, had you remained,

But one more waking from a recurrent dream,

Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,

And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,

A ghost in marble of a girl you knew

Who would have loved you in a day or two.

Sonnet III

Analysis of Sonnet I

Sonnet III Analysis

Sonnet I

From the beginning, the woman narrator is talking about the annoyance of love. As Cupid, the God of love, shoots his arrows of love at her, she avoids them, trying not to fall subject to the foolishness of love. The woman mocks Cupid’s attempts, mimicking the numerous arrows whistling pass her face. Everyone in the world looks for love, except for this woman.

• She continues to personify love, as she did in the first sonnet. Is this poem to love or to a lover?

• Was this written about/for her soon to be husband?

• Why does she need his love?

Sonnet I uses Shakespeare’s iambic pentameter, with the scheme of ABABCDCDEFEFGG

As her envisions exclude her from the restraints of Cupid’s foolish love, a wreathe, used as imagery, is laid on a grave to show that she has put the idea of love to rest. She belittles the power of God, by proclaiming he is powerless in consuming her with the idea of love. As the sonnet reaches its turning point, the woman apologizes to God for her actions. She only wanted to fulfill her own personal desire of lustful pleasure.

• What's the double meaning behind charms?

• Is this an argumentative, defensive sonnet or the recognition of two free spirits?

Sonnet IV

Sonnet II

Sonnet IV

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnet III

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!

Faithless am I save to love's self alone.

Were you not lovely I would leave you now:

After the feet of beauty fly my own.

Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,

And water ever to my wildest thirst,

I would desert you — think not but I would! —

And seek another as I sought you first.

But you are mobile as the veering air,

And all your charms more changeful than the tide,

Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:

I have but to continue at your side.

So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,

I am most faithless when I most am true.

Sonnet IV Analysis

-1892-1950

-Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923

-Married to Eugen Jan Boissevain in 1923

-Poet, dramatist, lyricist, lecturer, translator, and short story writer

-"My candle burns at both ends..."

Sonnet II Analysis

She wants love it is not clear how she would have found it or if it would have worked but she wants it. She came from a time where love was not a thing you did it was a light of hope for some and a dark depressing alley for others.

• She forgets to separate her lovers individually
• She isn't being truthful, just playing around
• Fate is coming for her current lover as well
• Not people who love for long amount time
• Binding Vows-She's sad, but this is a lie
• Makes excuses that "nature" is separating them

Speaker expresses to lover that their time is brief, must cherish every moment, before they fall out of love or are forced to separate. They make promises to each other that might not be fulfilled, which include "the vows" Millay mentions. Speaker laments that the vows are not binding, but at the end it does not really matter, for when she ends with “biologically speaking.” Acceptance of the failure of individual relationships and looking further to the future for herself is the conclusion al outcome. Her whimsical tone follows a quirky kind of take on the carpe diem conventions, rejects the urgency of the genre. At the end she leaves the readers with many thoughts, in seeing if the speaker is trying desperatlely to mask her frustration.

She feels as though coming up from a time when love was a thing that did not exist in a sense of it was not taken seriously. Everyone just wanted to have fun and not commit but call it love as a joke. She did not want to commit but at the same time but she did not want to be alone. The man she fancied liked her only because of her shallowness.

Through the 14 lines you realize that she wants love but is not willing to openly come out to say it in person. She uses subliminal messages to hope the reader see she is really wants to be loved. She says “A ghost in marble of a girl you knew, who would have loved you in a day or two.” She says she could have loved this man but only if they had a few more days to spend together.

Sonnet IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear,

So make the most of this, your little day,

Your little month, your little half a year,

Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

And we are done forever; by and by

I shall forget you, as I said, but now,

If you entreat me with your loveliest lie

I will protest you with my favorite vow.

I would indeed that love were longer-lived,

And vows were not so brittle as they are,

But so it is, and nature has contrived

To struggle on without a break thus far, —

Whether or not we find what we are seeking

Is idle, biologically speaking.