Millay\'s \"And You as Well

¶ … Millay's "And you as well must die..."

Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of America's greatest twentieth century poets. Her poems often revolved around themes of love and death, usually in the same poem. This was made especially interesting because of her use of the sonnet form of poetry, which was often about love and life. Shakespeare is one of the best known writers of sonnets, and in fact the English form of the sonnet is often referred to as the Shakespearean sonnet (Baldick, 1990). Millay's sonnets are significant not only because she flipped the traditional sonnet's themes on their heads, but also because she uses a non-traditional form of the poem, at least in English (Baldick, 1990). Her sonnet "And you as well must die, beloved dust," is a perfect example of the way Millay uses the Italian sonnet form to emphasize her non-traditional association of love with death.

Both English and Italian sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, and Millay does not deviate from this regular heart-beat-like rhythm very much (Baldick, 1990). This is one of the things that makes her poems so penetrating. The other main feature of the sonnet, besides its fourteen lines, is the rhyme scheme, which has a direct relationship to the meaning of the poem, and this is also the difference between English or Shakespearean sonnets and the Italian or Petrarchan sonnets (Baldick, 1990). Rhyme also helps draw the reader into the poem, and makes certain words stand out. The words at the ends of the lines in the first half of this particular sonnet of Millay's are all fairly negative: "dust," "gust," "frost," "dead," "fled." This is a great contrast to the second part of the poem, which has a more complex rhyme scheme and much lighter words that rhyme at the end of its lines, such as "arise," "air," and "flower," although the last line does return to "die." This shift in the poem comes in the ninth line, dividing the poem into a beginning octet (eight lines) and a final answering sestet (six lines).

This is the typical structure of a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, rather than the usual three quatrains and final couplet of the Shakespearean or English sonnet (Baldick, 1990). This structure serves Millay's thoughts in this poem better, however. Rather than a poem reflecting her enjoyment of her lover, as would have been typical of an English sonnet, this poem is about the speaker reflecting on the fact that her lover will have to die. The opening octet seems to describe all of the features of the lover and how they will al fade away in death. The sestet puts a sudden shift in the poem, however, using lighter imagery though not taking a lighter tone, and possibly indicating that the speaker is lamenting their own death, and referring to their own body in the first half. The shift in a sonnet is called the volta, and is another standard feature of the sonnet (Baldick, 1990). Usually in an Italian sonnet, however, the octet presents a problem or question, and the sestet solves or answers it. In this poem, the sestet adds a complication to the problem set in the octet -- not only is the object of death in question (i.e. speaker or lover), but the sestet also attests that love will not conquer death, either.