Ashes of Life
Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;Eat I must, and sleep I will,--and would that night were here!But ah!--to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!Would that it were day again!--with twilight near!
Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;This or that or what you will is all the same to me;But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,--There's little use in anything as far as I can see.
Love has gone and left me,--and the neighbors knock and borrow,And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,--And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrowThere's this little street and this little house.
Words in this poem
- borrow v. t.
- To receive from another as a loan, with the implied or expressed intention of returning the identical article or its equivalent in kind; -- the opposite of lend. [OE. borwen, AS. borgian, fr. borg, borh, pledge; akin to D. borg, G. borg; prob. fr. root of AS. beorgan to protect. Borough.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Ashes of Life is in the public domain. This text is taken from Renascence, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #109; 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, Ashes of Life, in Renascence and Other Poems (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #109, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/millay-renascence/ashes-of-life.html, id L07728.
Form and metre
Ashes of Life is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is trochaic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 8% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic heptameter.
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 ABAB alikeA · hereB · strikeA · nearB
- 2 ABAB doA · meB · throughA · seeB
- 3 -A-A borrow · mouseA · morrow · houseA
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 trochaic heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike; | 13 | ···········˘/ |
| Eat I must, and sleep I will,--and would that night were here! | 13 | ············· |
| But ah!--to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike! | 13 | ····˘/····/˘· |
| Would that it were day again!--with twilight near! | 11 | ·····˘/·/·· |
| Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do; | 13 | ············· |
| This or that or what you will is all the same to me; | 13 | ············· |
| But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through,-- | 14 | ······˘/······ |
| There's little use in anything as far as I can see. | 14 | ·/˘··/˘······· |
| Love has gone and left me,--and the neighbors knock and borrow, | 14 | ········/˘··/· |
| And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,-- | 14 | ····˘/˘··/˘··· |
| And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow | 16 | ··/˘··/˘··/˘··/˘ |
| There's this little street and this little house. | 10 | ··/˘···/˘· |
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.