Wild Swan

Wild Swan

Wild Swan

In 1921, two volumes of Edna St. Vincent Millay's rhymes were issued in New York: A Few Figs from Thistles and Second April. The second referred encompasses more rhymes about Millay's tender disappointments and heartbreaks. These rhymes are at times ardent and at times subdued, but they are all intensely personal. Scholars often have declared that Millay's rhymes are feminine in its purpose on sensitivities, but it in addition breaks from the feminine practice in its raw honesty. "Wild Swans," which becomes noticeable in Second April, is a good instance of this phenomenon. The speaker expresses customarily feminine emotions of heartache and despair, but she is less conventional in that she is severe headed for her own heart. Although she focuses on her emotions, she looks for a result to her emotional upheaval by eluding domesticity. (Clampitt 1992)

 In only eight lines, Millay delineates an episode in which the speaker evokes seeing the plane tour of uncultivated swans and then longs for their return. The subject of birds in rhymes about human sensitivity is a long-standing practice, but Millay benefits it in a sole way. In reply to observing the birds, the speaker necessarily makes an option between her "tiresome" heart and the swans, and she decides the swans. Millay brings ahead a subtle tightness in the structure of the rhyme, which is both evaluated and spontaneous.

Although “Wild Swans” is only eight lines, Millay ushers in some well-written inventions to add extent down to the poem. The swans are symbolic of unrestrained and certainty; that the speaker delineates them as uncultivated emphasizes their entirely unfettered alive and their instinctual sense of purpose. Millay engages synecdoche (using a part to exemplify the whole) by citing to the heart. The heart exemplifies the speaker's every part of emotional certainty, embracing emotions ...