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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.
In this poem, Millay not only veers from the traditional use of the English sonnet, she does not even adhere to the conventions of the less traditional form she ahs chosen. Her poems...
Her use of form mirrors her meaning and feeling.
Works Cited
Baldick, Chris. "About the Sonnet" Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Accessed on the University of Illinois website 28 January 2009. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/sonnet.htm
And you as well must die, beloved dust
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell, this wonder fled,
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
or how beloved above all else that dies.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Works Cited
Baldick, Chris. "About the Sonnet" Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Accessed on the University of Illinois website 28 January 2009. http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/sonnet.htm
And you as well must die, beloved dust
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
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