Afternoon on a Hill
I will be the gladdest thingUnder the sun!I will touch a hundred flowersAnd not pick one.
I will look at cliffs and cloudsWith quiet eyes,Watch the wind bow down the grass,And the grass rise.
And when lights begin to showUp from the town,I will mark which must be mine,And then start down.
About this text
Afternoon on a Hill is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59167; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Afternoon on a Hill, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59167, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/millay-poems/afternoon-on-a-hill.html, id L24329.
Form and metre
Afternoon on a Hill is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in iambic dimeter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A thing · sunA · flowers · oneA
- 2 -A-A clouds · eyesA · grass · riseA
- 3 -A-A show · townA · mine · downA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I will be the gladdest thing | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Under the sun! | 4 | ···· |
| I will touch a hundred flowers | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| And not pick one. | 4 | ···· |
| I will look at cliffs and clouds | 7 | ······· |
| With quiet eyes, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Watch the wind bow down the grass, | 7 | ······· |
| And the grass rise. | 4 | ···· |
| And when lights begin to show | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| Up from the town, | 4 | ···· |
| I will mark which must be mine, | 7 | ······· |
| And then start down. | 4 | ···· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.