“Well, I Have Lost You”
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
S: A king sending his love to death.
P: Connotation: To create a melancholic tone to determine his side of a thematic conflict.
O: To express his attitude in sending his love to death.
-It is a sonnet with a rhyme scheme of ABAB.
T: Elegiac, Bitter, and Melancholic: The speaker expresses his lost of love through these tones.
T: Millay uses a melancholic tone to create an atmosphere of heart vs. reason.
T: The title is seems to be made up of a rhetorical tone.
S: The speaker seems to be a king.
In the poem, “Well I Have Lost You,” Edna St. Vincent Millay creates a thematic conflict of heart vs. reason to determine the speaker’s attitude in sending his love to death. Millay uses connotation to express the thoughts of the speaker in which the speaker struggles with the conviction of his love. Millay says, “If I had loved you less or played you slyly I might have held you for a summer more…” By expressing the speaker’s thoughts, Millay creates a melancholic tone to determine the speaker’s aspect of the conflict of heart vs. reason.
Within the poem, Millay creates a conflict in which the speaker tries to choose whether or not he should live through his anguish. Millay says, “Should I outlive this anguish…” In his thoughts the speaker seems to bring about past experiences that would jeopardize his decision. Millay says, “…And no such summer as the one before.” Throughout the poem, Millay creates a title that signifies an unfinished feeling that would attract a reader to read more. Therefore, as the sonnet ends, the king makes his decision to live through this emotional torment and not hold any grudges, “I shall have only good to say of you.”