Sorrow in Sonnet 29 Essay

How does the poet powerfully convey the sorrow of human life in sonnet 29?

In 'Sonnet 29' Edna St Vincent Millay uses loss and pain in love and features in the nature as devises to reflect the sorrows of human life. By using multiple metaphors, Millay was able to associate her personal melancholy with certain aspects of nature which helps to emphasize the sorrow in human life.

At the start of the poem Millay encapsulates the sorrow of loss in the four starting lines. In the first two lines Millay uses a metaphor to compare young age to the "day" and old age to the "close of day." The "light of day" in the first line also represents the pleasant things that one possesses in their early days, for example-beauty. Here Millay is implying that all the pleasant things in human lives' will be lost during the elapsing of time. In lines three to four Millay uses her own beauty as an example of this loss. In line three she states that her "beauties passed away" as she gets older. Along with her loss of beauty, her love had also been downgraded "from field to thicket." From orderly and nicely shaped to something irregular and unpleasant.

Millay expresses the cyclinical order of nature from line five through to line eight. The first three lines of the four, all represent the ending of a cycle. The "waning of the moon," the "ebbing of the tide," and the "man's desire" being "hushed". These endings to cycles are metaphors that Millay uses to compare with human life. Here she is possibly indicating one of humans' great sorrows; the fact that the ending is an unavoidable part to everything. At this point Millay might be eluding a religious reference; the sorrow of mankinds' inescapable fate that is predestined by God. All of the three cycles reach their peeks before they start to decline; the moon is full before it starts waning, the tide must have reached the highest point before it ebb, and the man would have satisfied his desire before it's "hushed." Millay is probably using this as an indication to her own relationship. She is perhaps stating that however passionate love gets, there will always be a point where it will cease. This is further proven by the eighth line of the sonnet, "and you no longer look with on me."

Millay's own disconsolate view of love is then expressed in lines nine to twelve. Therefore these three lines' focus is on the sorrow brought about by love itself. Millay uses her opinions on love as a guide to show the readers of the poem the fragility and instability of love, or any relationship. From line nine to eleven, Millay uses her metaphors to compare love with certain aspects of nature. She first compares love as a blossomed flower attacked by "wind". By doing this Millay was able to emphasize the fragility of love; as blossomed flowers are defenceless towards outside factors, just like love. She then describes love as "the great tide that treads the shifting beach." This is an implication of the instable nature of love; love comes and goes but never stays. Despite her views of love being represented in these lines, line twelve is the actual punch line; "strewing fresh wreckage gathered in gales." In this line Millay is exposing the pain and sorrow she felt in love to the reader. This line is strongly emphasized by the two previous lines and the metaphor within it self.

The last two lines of this poem conclude Millay's life experiences. In these two lines Millay is talking about how she looks back at her life and realizing that the sad events in life had to happen in order for one to be able to fully understand these sorrows. Where as from line one through to line twelve Millay seems to be oblivious towards the sorrows she encounters though out her life. This is presented to the audience with the repetition of "pity me not." However, in the second to last line she had changed her tone from "pity me not" to "pity me." By doing this Millay is implying that the biggest sorrow of human life is taking parts in this involuntary act of learning. This helplessness displayed while forced to experience the sorrows of life is the only thing worth pitying.

In Edna St Vincent Millay's poem "Sonnet 29," the sorrows of human life are strongly conveyed through out the passage. Millay uses metaphors, repetitions and lists in her poem to assist in conveying her ideas of the sorrows in human life