Edna St. Vincent Millay Sonnet 43

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Sonnets are poems used to describe love. Sonnet XVIII by Shakespeare, Sonnet IV by Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barrett Browning all have different viewpoints and opinions on what love is. Using tone the three sonnets narrate stories of love that show a unique perspective about the sentiment.

Edna St. Vincent Millay’s sonnet IV follows the central idea of how love is not everlasting. In quatrain one, the problem introduced is that the love between the speaker and their beloved is only temporary. That her beloved should love her and cherish her before their love comes to an end. In the second quatrain, she expands on this problem. In lines 7 and 8, it says, “If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow.” Basically saying that if …show more content…
Sonnet 43 is about everlasting love. The speaker in sonnet 43 is infatuated with her beloved. The topic introduced in quatrain one is that the speaker loves her beloved so much that she want to count the ways in which she loves them. In the second quatrain, the speaker is telling her significant other how bad she needs him. “I love thee to the level of everyday’s most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.” Browning uses this line to compare the speaker’s need for their significant other to the necessity of light. Like the day needs sunlight and the way you need the light when you’re in darkness. In the third quatrain, you start to see similarities between sonnet 43 and sonnet 4 by Milay. In lines 9 and 10 Browning writes, “I love thee with the passion, put to use in my old griefs,” and line 11, “ I love thee with the love I seemed to lose,” these lines represent that the speaker has had past loves that didn’t work out. This resembles the idea in sonnet 43 that love is not everlasting. Browning challenges these ideas in the couplet saying that she will love her current lover forever, even after her
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Comparing Love In Browning And Millay's Sonnet

Love in Sonnets Throughout the course of time people have searched for ways in order to express their love for other people. During this process poetry was discovered, and great writers began to use it as a tool to describe their own love. In the contrasting sonnets written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning “Sonnet 43” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Love Is Not All: It Is Not Meat Nor Drink” they describe love in very different ways, yet have the same conclusion and desire to have love themselves. Both…

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