Pity Me Not Because The Light Of Day

Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)



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 and thicket as the the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
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
What the swift mind beholds at ever turn.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on May 03, 2023

36 sec read
182

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 587
Words 121
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American 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 more…

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    "Pity Me Not Because The Light Of Day" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 31 Oct. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/9416/pity-me-not-because-the-light-of-day>.

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