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Sonnets

Sonnets

By: Edna St. Vincent Millay
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It has been observed that within the narrow confines of a sonnet the mind can turn around but cannot take flight. Some of Millay’s sonnets, though, resemble the narrow confines of a loaded pistol (with a silencer), at the end of which the reader feels propelled to a higher emotional plane. Nevertheless, the predominant mood is melancholy, regret for the brevity of life and especially for the death of her husband. Today’s world can accept more readily than her own the feminism of her poetry and her casual but touching references to love outside of marriage. Millay’s syntax can become challenging, but her most profound utterances are simply phrased (“I do not think I would”) and often startlingly colloquial: “you may whistle for me.” Millay does not follow exclusively the Shakespearean or the Italian rhyme scheme in her sonnets but varies at will. Her iambic meter is (except as indicated below) as strict as Milton’s, with the same love of enjambment and inverted feet to obscure rhymes and to create bouncing rhythms and sudden turns. Her handling of the sonnet form departs rarely but sometimes radically from tradition, as when a heptameter line (of seven feet) replaces the pentameter at the end of a sonnet, a regular feature of the final lines of “Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree”; e.g., “And some old catalogue, and a brown, shriveled apple core.” She also permits an extrametrical weak syllable at the caesura and occasional other weak, nearly negligible syllables elsewhere, usually justified as pronounceable elisions, like “risen” (ris’n), “blossoming” (bloss’ming), “enemy” (en’my); yet sometimes not, like “ne(ver),” “ult(i)mate,” “flat(tened).” (Summary by T. A. Copeland)Copyright Single Author Genre
Episodes
  • Sonnets - Edna St Vincent Millay

    Sonnets - Edna St Vincent Millay
    Jul 8 2026
    It has been observed that within the narrow confines of a sonnet the mind can turn around but cannot take flight. Some of Millay’s sonnets, though, resemble the narrow confines of a loaded pistol (with a silencer), at the end of which the reader feels propelled to a higher emotional plane. Nevertheless, the predominant mood is melancholy, regret for the brevity of life and especially for the death of her husband. Today’s world can accept more readily than her own the feminism of her poetry and her casual but touching references to love outside of marriage. Millay’s syntax can become challenging, but her most profound utterances are simply phrased (“I do not think I would”) and often startlingly colloquial: “you may whistle for me.” Millay does not follow exclusively the Shakespearean or the Italian rhyme scheme in her sonnets but varies at will. Her iambic meter is (except as indicated below) as strict as Milton’s, with the same love of enjambment and inverted feet to obscure rhymes and to create bouncing rhythms and sudden turns. Her handling of the sonnet form departs rarely but sometimes radically from tradition, as when a heptameter line (of seven feet) replaces the pentameter at the end of a sonnet, a regular feature of the final lines of “Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree”; e.g., “And some old catalogue, and a brown, shriveled apple core.” She also permits an extrametrical weak syllable at the caesura and occasional other weak, nearly negligible syllables elsewhere, usually justified as pronounceable elisions, like “risen” (ris’n), “blossoming” (bloss’ming), “enemy” (en’my); yet sometimes not, like “ne(ver),” “ult(i)mate,” “flat(tened).” (Summary by T. A. Copeland)
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    55 mins
  • Sonnets - Edna St Vincent Millay

    Sonnets - Edna St Vincent Millay
    Jul 8 2026
    Naden's sonnets have topics as diverse as astronomy, classical mythology and Shakespeare's birthplace. This collection is taken from Naden's complete poems, and whether listeners enjoy French history or the natural world, there are subjects to appeal to all tastes.- Summary by Newgatenovelist
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    55 mins
  • Sonnets - Edna St Vincent Millay

    Sonnets - Edna St Vincent Millay
    Jul 8 2026
    This is an excellent selection of introspective, inspirational and remarkably compelling sonnets from one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century. Christina Rossetti, in writing of the frailties of mankind and the mysteries of existence, sheds a new light on the nature of love, life and the inevitable "silent land". The lattice of sentient awareness which like a web unites and unifies this collection is one of an indulgent perception of life and its diversity, of human emotion and its capriciousness and of a deep conception of death and its intangible illusion of finality. This illusion, indefinable as it is, becomes an enigma in the hands of Rossetti, often becoming an ambiguity, at times a fantasy and on occasion almost a dismal reality. These poems, these snapshots of life, these glimpses of the pathos of the here and the mystery of the hereafter are assured to fascinate, allure and indeed perplex, motivate and inspire. Hope and faith, to which the human condition is wont to aspire are ever present in Rossetti's poems, along with the assurance that, "death be strong, yet love is strong as death." Foremost components of Rossetti's concept of hope and faith are that love can prevail, love can promise and love can unite, "happy equals in the flowering land / Of love, that knows not a dividing sea." And if fate decrees a parting should take place between those who love, Rossetti has issued the memorable, inspiring, albeit arduous entreaty, "Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad." - Summary by Bruce Kachuk
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    55 mins
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