"Wild Swans" is a short poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, with an interesting rhyme scheme—loosely ABBCCBAC. The poem describes a moment of reflection in the life of the speaker, a reverie triggered by the sight of "wild swans" overhead.
In the first line, the speaker describes how she "looked in [her] heart" when the flock of swans flew overhead. The descriptor "wild" indicates that this moment was unexpected, the swans obeying no law but the law of nature, and the speaker's reverie—her instinct to explore her inner self—takes her by surprise.
The second line of the poem is a rhetorical question, as the speaker asks what she saw in her heart when she examined it. The rhetorical question is given seemingly a cumulative effect by the addition of the following line, which states that, beyond this question, "only a question less or a question more" arose from her self-consideration. The repetition of the word "question" places a greater emphasis on the process of self-questioning, which as yet has revealed no answer.
Next, the poet states that there was nothing in her heart "to match the flight of wild birds flying." The active verb, "flying," which echoes the noun, "flight," creates a sense of prolonged motion and activity in the behavior of the birds, while in the poet's heart there is, by comparison, "nothing," a state of inaction. In the following line, the poet describes her heart as "tiresome": it continues on in its way, "forever living and dying," cyclical, without ever alighting upon anything as active or as intriguing as the flight of the swans.
The following line uses a metaphor to describe her heart—the heart here seemingly representing her whole inner self (synecdoche). The speaker's heart is "a house without air," the suggestion being that it is enclosed, stuffy, and stifling. The speaker describes herself figuratively exiting this house, leaving her stifled existence behind her.
In the final two lines of the poem, the speaker exhorts the wild swans to "come over the town, come over / The town again." The repetition of the phrase "come over the town" creates a sense of impassioned earnestness, a call to the wild to bring their activity ("trailing," "crying,") back to stimulate the speaker's inner self again. Having been confronted with the wild motion of the swans, "trailing their legs" freely, the speaker has become aware of the stifling nature of her own inner self, and now wants to let nature's stimulus in.
Monday, August 10, 2015
What is a line break down of "Wild Swans" by Edna St. Vincent Millay?
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