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Pity me not because the light of day (Sonnet

POEM TEXT 29) logical argument, comparing love to natural forces like the
ebbing of the tide and the waning of the moon. This suggests
that the speaker shouldn’t be pitied just because her lover is
1 Pity me not because the light of day losing interest in her: love, like light and tides, the speaker
argues, is a big natural force, and its change and diminishment
2 At close of day no longer walks the sky;
are thus only natural. These natural images also suggest love’s
3 Pity me not for beauties passed away power and beauty: love is as life-giving as the sun and mighty as
4 From field and thicket as the year goes by; the ocean.
5 Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Yet even in this seemingly objective, reasoned argument,
6 Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, there’s a hint of sadness. The poem’s natural imagery refers to a
7 Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon, lot of things that always come back after they go away: the sun
8 And you no longer look with love on me. rises again, the moon waxes after it wanes, the tide comes in
9 This have I known always: Love is no more after it goes out. There’s no such guarantee with love.
10 Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Having repeatedly insisted that she shouldn’t be pitied because
11 Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, of inevitable change, the speaker changes her tune: she should
12 Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales: be pitied, but only because her heart can’t accept the inevitable
13 Pity me that the heart is slow to learn change that her mind grasps so easily.
14 What the swift mind beholds at every turn. This turn only comes in the poem’s last two lines. The simple,
brief closing words suggest that the speaker is in so much pain
she can hardly articulate it. The distance between the mind’s
knowing and the heart’s feeling is expressed in silence: the
SUMMARY mind can come up with all kinds of clever explanations, but the
heart is stuck in its wordless grief.
Don't feel sorry for me because the sun goes down at the end
of the day. Don't feel sorry for me because the fields and
Where this theme appears in the poem:
thickets lose their beauties as the year goes on. Don't feel sorry
for me because the moon wanes, or because the tide goes out, • Lines 1-14
or because a man's love fades so quickly, and you don't love me
anymore.
IMPERMANENCE
I've always known this much: love is nothing but a flower
battered by the wind, or a strong tide that throws wreckage The speaker of “Pity me not” insists that she
from storms all over the shore. Feel sorry for me because my shouldn’t be pitied just because her lover doesn’t
heart is so slow to figure out what my mind can see evidence love her anymore, as that’s only natural: everything in the world
for everywhere. ends eventually. Through her images of natural waning and
fading, the speaker points at a bigger truth: love, beauty, and
essentially everything else are fleeting, because all things must
THEMES one day end.
The speaker's natural imagery suggests that the whole world
THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE HEART teaches her that nothing lasts forever. The poem’s first images
of “the light of day,” the “waning of the moon,” and the “ebbing of
AND THE MIND
the tide” are grand and impersonal, bigger than any tiny human
Though the speaker of “Pity me not” can provide any concerns. And when the speaker introduces the fact that “you
number of reasons that the end of a love affair shouldn’t no longer look with love on me” among these inevitable
surprise her, none of them can get at her central problem: her declines, she suggests that love, too, is a huge force that doesn’t
heart still feels the pain of fading love even though her mind pay much attention to the people it affects. This, she insists, is
can see how inevitable that fading is. The poem thus explores why it’s nonsensical to pity her for any of these changes:
one of the struggles of human life: understanding the truth they’ve got nothing to do with her, and this is just how things
doesn’t make it hurt less. are.
In the first part of the poem, the speaker uses a reasoned,

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There’s a bit of hope buried in these images, however: all the LINES 3-4
declining beauties that the speaker mentions will eventually Pity me not for beauties passed away
return again. That is, the tide will always come back in after it From field and thicket as the year goes by;
goes out, the sun will always rise, winter will turn to spring, and
the moon will always wax after it wanes. Yet while all these The speaker carries on as she started. She even uses
natural forces move through patterns of decline and return, par
parallelism
allelism, structuring the next two lines in just the same way
there’s no such guarantee with a lost love. as the first two, and anaphor
anaphoraa, starting this clause with the
same words as the last. And again, she's insisting that she
In linking the impermanence of natural things with the shouldn't be pitied just because the "beauties" of "field and
impermanence of love, the speaker thus seems either secretly thicket" diminish and fade as the year goes on.
optimistic or secretly pessimistic—or both! If the cycles of
natural decline are also seen as cycles of inevitable return, Here, the speaker is hearkening back to some very old
perhaps the speaker hopes that love might come back to her symbolism
symbolism. These lines evoke autumn: the season of
again. But if the speaker sees nature as following the pattern of melancholy and change, when the liveliness of spring and
love, there’s a bleaker vision here: even the cycling sun and summer transition into the cold death of winter. The autumn
moon will come to an end one day. she imagines is taking place in "field and thicket"—that is, a cozy,
friendly, familiar natural landscape. This isn't a wild wood, but
rather cultivated farmland. Just as in that first image of the
Where this theme appears in the poem:
personified "light of day," there's a lot of emotion concealed in
• Lines 1-12 these seemingly simple words. The "beauties passed away" the
speaker is thinking of here seem to be to do with familiarity and
comfort—again hinting at a love that felt like a life-giving home
LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS to her.
But the speaker again insists that she shouldn't be pitied just
LINES 1-2 because autumn comes. Like the sunset, that's just a part of
Pity me not because the light of day nature. It's also a seasonal marker, though—a sign of time
At close of day no longer walks the sky; passing.
"Pity me not" begins with an emphatic command. The speaker LINES 5-8
insists: whatever you do, don't feel sorry for me! The reason
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
she gives seems to be that pity, in the situation she's talking
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
about, would be ridiculous. Why would one pity someone just
Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,
because the sun had gone down? It does that every day!
And you no longer look with love on me.
But the way the speaker makes her command suggests that
The speaker's next lines again start with that anaphoric "Pity
there's something more complicated going on here. She doesn't me not," and with more images of perfectly natural
just say, "Pity me not because the sun always goes down at the diminishment in the "waning moon" and the "ebbing tide."
end of the day." Rather more poetically, she says that "the light These images are also connected to each other: the moon
of day / At close of day no longer walks the sky." controls the tides, making them rise and fall as it moves closer
This personification suggests not just a sunset, but a kind of to and further from the earth.
vanishing sun-god: a human figure that has gone. While there's Again, there's a lot of significance underground here. The moon
no direct evidence yet, there's a sense already that this speaker is an old symbol of changeability; just ask Juliet
Juliet, who won't let
might be missing, not the sun, but a person who was like the sun Romeo swear his love for her on "th' inconstant moon" in case
to her, bringing warmth and light. his feelings change, too. But in combination with the tide, the
Perhaps the shape of this poem also provides a little hint in that moon also suggests the interconnection of lovers, the way one
direction. This is a sonnet
sonnet—and a whole lot of sonnets are about person can have an effect on another. And here, again, the
love. Even their meter
meter, the regular five-beat da-DUM
DUM of iambic moon is waning and the tide is going out.
pentameter, sounds like a heartbeat. But it's in lines 7 and 8 that the speaker really comes to her
Here, though, that heartbeat is disrupted. The poem starts, not point. Having prepared all these images of fading, diminishing
with an iamb, but a trochee (DUM
DUM-da): "Pi
Pity." Leaning on that nature—things that there would be absolutely no reason to pity
first syllable, the speaker already seems both insistent and anyone for—she suddenly changes tack and says directly what
upset, thrown right off her beat. Something pitiable to do with she's lost. The sun hasn't gone down, the season hasn't
love seems to have happened here, even if the speaker changed; rather, "you no longer look with love on me."
demands not to be pitied. There's a little shock in that apostrophe to the speaker's former

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lover. Up until now, the reader has probably been rolling along LINES 11-12
assuming that the speaker is addressing a general audience. Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Here, suddenly, the reader learns that the speaker is saying all Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
of this to a specific person with a strong, painful emotional
connection to her. More imagery from earlier in the poem returns here. The
reader has already encountered the wind-battered "blossom"
That the speaker waits so long to address this person hints at in line 10, hearkening back to the earlier "beauties" of the fields.
her deep suffering. She can say plenty about autumnal Now, the "ebbing tide" of line 6 returns in a much more
landscapes, but she has to work up to a direct confrontation dangerous form as "the great tide that treads the shifting
with the lover who has provoked these reflections. The shore."
relentless anaphora of "Nor that" in lines 6-7 gives the reader
the feeling that the speaker has to build up a head of steam to If love is a fragile, easy-to-damage blossom, it's also a powerful
even address her lover. tide. Here, that tide "treads the shifting shore"—personified
personified like
a sea-god, striding along uncertain and changeable sands.
The speaker also seems to be saying that love is a huge natural
force, like the sun or the moon or the seasons or the ocean. In What's more, it's throwing "fresh wreckage" around. The
so doing, she's classing the waning of love with the natural assonance on /eh/ sounds in the words "freesh wreeckage" draws
waning of all these phenomena. Love just fades, she suggests; the reader's attention to the strangeness of that image.
there's no reason to pity anyone for that. (Note, too, that the Freshness isn't necessarily a quality one connects with
speaker refers to "a man's desire" in particular—as if male wreckage; a wreck, after all, is the end of something. In that
desire is especially closely linked to impersonal natural cycles.) par
parado
adoxx, there's a feeling that the speaker's heartbreak is at
once the end of an old thing and the first event of a new—and
But there's something rather painful in the comparison. The
unwanted—life. Her lover's abandonment has hit her like a
sun will always rise again, the moon waxes after it wanes, the
shipwreck, and she's still staggering from it.
tide comes back in after it goes out—but there's no such
guarantee of renewal with faded love. More alliteration—on the hard /g/ sounds of "ggathered in the
gales" and the sibilant /sh/ sounds of "sh
shifting
LINES 9-10 sh
shore"—immerses the speaker (and the reader) in the
This have I known always: Love is no more atmosphere of storm and chaos. Those /g/ sounds hit like
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, wreckage crashing, and the /sh/ sounds like the slippery sand
underfoot.
After the direct confrontation with her lost love in lines 7-8, the
speaker makes a new point. She announces it with a dramatic LINES 13-14
caesur
caesuraa, the only one that appears in the poem:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
This ha
havve I known alwa
always:
ys: LLo
ove is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, Familiar words come back at the very end of the poem, this
time in a different form.
That strong mid-line colon, stopping the reader in their tracks A lot of sonnets contain a moment known as a volta—a place
and insisting that they listen, fits in with the speaker's emphatic where the sonnet gets a new idea or reinterprets an old one.
tone. "This I have known always" is pretty strong stuff. To have Having fully established that she sees love as a powerful,
"always known" that love is nothing more than a windblown natural phenomenon that one can't expect not to lose, the
blossom suggests a cynicism that perhaps doesn't square with speaker comes to her sonnet's volta and changes her tune.
the speaker's melancholic, sensitive imagery
imagery. Perhaps the Where in the past she's repeated "Pity me not," here she says,
speaker does feel that she always knew that love was fragile "Pity me."
and temporary as a flower—but that doesn't mean she wasn't But the loss of love itself isn't what she wants to be pitied for.
invested in her love anyway. Rather, it's that her heart can't catch up with her head. She can
Take a look at the alliter
alliteration
ation of line 10, too. The repeated /w/ see examples all around her of things that fade and things that
sounds of "the wide blossom which the wind assails" almost vanish, and understand them intellectually. But her heart can't
sound like the whoosh of the winds they describe. As the just accept these good examples and go, "Oh, that's all right,
speaker lays out her understanding of love, she seems to then!"
become more and more deeply immersed in her imagery. That The language of this final passage, after the drama of the past
"blossom" also hearkens back to the "beauties passed away / few lines, feels simple and quiet. Like every Shakespearean
From field and thicket as the year goes by" in lines 3-4. sonnet, this one ends on a couplet
couplet, and the rhyme ironically
matches the line about the heart with the line about the

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mind—even though those two parts of the speaker aren't lost love.
"rhyming" in real life. (See the Form and Rhyme Scheme
sections for more on this.) Where this symbol appears in the poem:
The enjambment here makes that break between heart and • Lines 3-4: “Pity me not for beauties passed away / From
mind even clearer—and also makes it sound a bit like the field and thicket as the year goes by;”
speaker might be trying not to cry. That break in her thought is • Line 10: “the wide blossom which the wind assails,”
like a sob or a hiccup. Clearly as she understands the simple
facts of impermanence, this speaker is still suffering deeply, in a
way that reason just can't touch. This poem, with its apostrophe THE SUN AND MOON
to the lost lover, suggests that her heart really is not ready to The sun and the moon are often symbols of time,
let go. because they're how humans measure time. (The
word "month," for instance, comes from the same root as
"moon," as a month tracks a full moon-cycle.) In their different
SYMBOLS ways, the sun and moon also represent love: the sun for its life-
giving power, and the moon for love's fickleness and
THE SEA changeability. They serve both of these symbolic roles here.
The sea is a frequent symbol of love's dangerous The speaker has resigned herself to the idea that love is just like
inconstancy, and it plays exactly that role here. In any other natural cycle: subject to waning over time. Here, she
particular, this poem draws attention to the ocean's tides—the says that it makes about as much sense to mourn her lost love
regular ebb and flow of water that changes with the moon. as it would to mourn the fact that the sun sets and the moon
These, like the other natural phenomena the speaker observes, gets smaller over the course of the month. There's a sad
are perfectly normal and predictable patterns; the tide going undercurrent here, though: her lover, unlike the sun and the
out isn't something to mourn, it's just a regular part of the day. moon, doesn't seem likely to come back again.
The sea, like love, can also be stormy. The speaker doesn't just
imagine the tide going out, but throwing wreckage around, Where this symbol appears in the poem:
perhaps the remains of the former love she laments here. • Lines 1-2: “the light of day / At close of day no longer
In connecting her lover's waning interest in her with the sea, walks the sky;”
the speaker suggests that their shared love was once huge and • Line 5: “the waning of the moon,”
powerful—and that it still has a great deal of power over her,
even as it diminishes.
POETIC DEVICES
Where this symbol appears in the poem:
• Line 6: “the ebbing tide goes out to sea,” ALLITERATION
• Lines 11-12: “the great tide that treads the shifting Alliter
Alliteration
ation is a subtle presence in "Pity me not," giving energy
shore, / Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:” to the more emotionally intense latter half of the poem.
Because alliteration doesn't turn up too much in regular day-to-
day speech, it tends to draw attention to itself, and that's just
PLANTS AND FLOWERS what happens here. More and more alliteration creeps in as the
Plants, especially flowers, are often symbolic of life, speaker, against her will, starts to really feel her feelings.
joy, fertility, and love. Here, those plants are The first meaningful bit of alliteration in this poem appears in
endangered or fading away—just like the connection between line 8, with the repeated /l/ sounds of "you no longer look with
the speaker and her former lover. love on me." That's a pretty important turn, featuring the
The speaker imagines plant life twice here: once as a introduction of the "you," the speaker's former lover.
generalized bounty of "beauties" of the "field and thicket" (now The following lines, in which the speaker feels her love as a
"passed away"), and once as "the wide blossom which the wind blossom torn by winds and a changeable tide throwing up
assails." In both of these images, there's a sense of the sadness wreckage, keep up that alliterative emphasis. There's the windy
of change. The richness of flowers in spring seems to be giving /w/ sound of "the wide blossom which the wind assails" and the
way to the storm-winds of autumn in the speaker's heart. Part hard /g/ sounds of that "wreckage gathered in the gales"—both
of the sadness of dying flowers is that one remembers how moments where the alliteration also mimics the sound or
beautiful they were when they were new, and this is exactly the feeling of what it describes. There's also alliterative sibilance on
predicament the speaker finds herself in as she reflects on her

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the "sh
shifting sh
shore," which sounds like those very shifting sands.
The phrase "Strrewing frresh wrreckage" also features alliteration • Line 10: “which,” “wind”
of a sort, in the repetition of an initial /r/ sound. • Line 12: “fresh wreckage”
The speaker leaves all that dense alliteration behind in the sad, • Line 13: “Pity me”
simple final couplet. Here, there's a subtle echo between "sslow"
and "sswift," drawing attention to the contrast between the APOSTROPHE
speaker's feelings and reason. Alliteration thus draws attention The apostrophe of "Pity me not" addresses this poem directly
to the most emotionally heated part of the speaker's lament, to the speaker's former lover—but seems to reach out to a
setting up a stormy backdrop for the poem's conclusion. wider circle of readers, too.
At first, the reader doesn't know that the speaker has a specific
Where Alliter
Alliteration
ation appears in the poem: person in mind. The first direct addresses of this poem, those
• Line 4: “From field” repeated "Pity me not[s]," could easily be directed at a general
• Line 7: “so soon” reading audience. But this poem unfolds its meaning slowly.
• Line 8: “longer look,” “love” When the reader finally reaches line 8 and learns that the
• Line 10: “wide,” “which,” “wind” speaker is addressing a "you" who no longer "look[s] with love
• Line 11: “shifting,” “ shore” on me," they might feel a sting of pain on the speaker's behalf.
• Line 12: “gathered,” “gales” It's one thing to tell everyone that one doesn't want pity—but
• Line 13: “slow” quite another to have to reject a former lover's pity. (Pity just
• Line 14: “swift” isn't the most romantic of emotions.)
The slowness with which the speaker reveals the full meaning
ASSONANCE of her poem means that the volta in the final lines (that is, the
Much of the subtle assonance in "Pity me not" appears in two of moment when a sonnet turns to a new idea or reimagines an
its most important repeated words: "Pityy mee." The long /ee/ old one) hits with particular weight. It turns out the speaker is
sounds there pop up a lot in the early part of the asking for pity from her former lover—an extra-painful position
poem—especially in the fading "beautie ies" of the "fie
ield and to be in. The apostrophe in this poem is another way of driving
thicket as the yea
ear goes by." Though the first lines of the poem home one of the poem's central ideas: the heart finds it pretty
insist that there's no reason for anyone to pity the speaker, hard to let go of love, even when the mind understands how
those assonant /ee/ sounds might undercut the message a love might fade. In addressing her former lover, the speaker
little: they sound a little like pained kee
eening, like a little kid here shows that she can't quite let go of that lover yet.
crying their eyes out. But the speaker cuts that weepy /ee/ off
with the sharpness of the word "not"—at least, until the end of Where Apostrophe appears in the poem:
the poem. • Line 1: “Pity me not”
There are a few other spots of assonance here, like the /eh/ of • Line 3: “Pity me not”
"freesh wreeckage" in line 12. That sound connects two important • Line 5: “Pity me not”
and vivid words. The freshness of that wreckage suggests how • Line 8: “you no longer look with love on me”
recent the speaker's heartbreak was, and how new her • Line 13: “Pity me”
suffering is. There's also something a little bit surprising about
the combination of freshness and wrecks. Wreckage is the end CAESURA
of something, freshness the beginning; "fresh wreckage"
There's only one caesur
caesuraa in "Pity me not," but it's an important
suggests a painful novelty, the end of the speaker's old life and
one, introducing a whole new tone to the poem and preparing
the unwanted first day of her new life. The assonance both links
the reader for the speaker's final words. This caesura appears
these disparate ideas and adds some plain old musicality; the
in line 9:
human ear just tends to like matching, harmonious sounds.
This I have known alwa
always:
ys: LLo
ove is no more
Where Assonance appears in the poem: Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
• Line 1: “Pity me,” “because”
• Line 2: “longer walks” In a poem that has to this point flowed on smoothly, often
• Line 3: “Pity me,” “beauties” leaping line breaks with enjambments
enjambments, this caesura comes as a
• Line 4: “field,” “year” little bit of a shock, halting the reader suddenly and demanding
• Line 5: “Pity me” their attention. The speaker is telling her former lover (and her
reader) something new and important now: she's always

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understood that love is fragile and temporary. The break in the ENJAMBMENT
line gives space and weight to this idea. In carrying ideas over from line to line, enjambment often
That caesura marks a big change in tone, too. Where in the creates a sense of momentum, rushing the reader onward.
earlier part of the poem the speaker's imagery tracked gentle, Here, enjambment also sets up little bursts of
day-to-day movements of the sun, moon, and tides, the imagery surprise—especially in moments where the first line of the
that follows the caesura is a lot rougher, full of violent winds divided sentence could stand on its own.
and terrible storms. It's as if the speaker, in explaining how For example, take a look at the enjambment in lines 9-10:
clearly she understands how and why her lover has stopped
loving her, nonetheless finds herself caught up in blustery
This have I known always: Love is no more
emotions of their own. This prepares the reader for the
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
helpless sadness of the final couplet.
On their own, the words "This I have known always: Love is no
Where Caesur
Caesuraa appears in the poem: more" could be a bleak pronouncement on the existence of love
• Line 9: “This have I known always: Love is no more” at all. Might this speaker believe that love is always "no more," a
thing of the past? The next line alters the idea, but for a
ANAPHORA moment, readers finds themselves in a pretty grim worldview.

Anaphor
Anaphoraa is one of the most striking features of "Pity me not," The important final couplet of this sonnet (lines 13-14) is also
and it serves an important thematic purpose. Through enjambed. Here, enjambment works on the poem's sound and
anaphora and the par
parallelism
allelism it creates, the speaker sets up an tone as much as its meaning. The break in the middle of the
insistent pattern—only to significantly break it at the poem's sentence "Pity me that the heart is slow to learn / What the
end. swift mind beholds at every turn" plays the same trick as the
enjambment in lines 9-10, but also gives those final words an
The most obvious repetition here is of the words "Pity me not" almost hiccupy tone, as if the speaker has to pause to hold back
themselves. The first half of the poem repeats those words at a sob.
the beginning of new clauses three times, and then underlines
those repetitions with even more anaphora, adding those
Where Enjambment appears in the poem:
repeating "Nor that" clauses in lines 6 and 7. All those
repetitions make the speaker sound like she's really trying to • Lines 1-2: “day / At”
convince someone that she shouldn't be pitied—perhaps herself • Lines 3-4: “away / From”
as much as her former lover. There's something insistent and • Lines 9-10: “more / Than”
even stern in all those sentences that move in the same ways. • Lines 13-14: “learn / What”
The second half of the poem uses its own new anaphora in the
repetition of lines that start with the phrase "Than the," and IMAGERY
which insist that love is no more than a frail blossom or a The imagery of "Pity me not" helps to create a whole world for
destructive tide. Then, at last, the poem returns to words that the speaker to feel tragic in. Perhaps the reader has had a day
are at once familiar and new: that "Pity me," but without the when, because something lousy happened to them, everything
"not" the reader has gotten used to. around them looked bleak and grim and grey? Something
Anaphora thus provides the poem's initial stalwart, insistent similar seems to be happening to the speaker here.
tone and set up the tragic punchline: the speaker does need pity, The speaker's imagery takes in the natural world around her,
after all. from the "light of day" to the "field and thicket" to the "shifting
shore." These images evoke a whole landscape, moving from
Where Anaphor
Anaphoraa appears in the poem: autumnal fields to a stormy coast as the sun sets and the moon
wanes. Everything in nature seems to respond to the speaker's
• Line 1: “Pity me not,” “light of day” heartbreak; she sees examples of decline and decay
• Line 2: “close of day” everywhere she looks.
• Line 3: “Pity me not”
• Line 5: “Pity me not” Of course, the speaker is seeking out analogues to her own
• Line 6: “Nor that” heartbreak in the natural world, not actually wandering
• Line 7: “Nor that” through this scenery. But in evoking all these images of fading
• Line 10: “Than the” nature, she also creates an atmospheric landscape that the
• Line 11: “Than the” poem seems to live inside.
• Line 13: “Pity me” The imagery's focus on nature also means that the speaker

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seems to be looking away from something: in evoking classing her lost love with sunsets, autumn, the waning moon,
diminished natural beauty, she emphatically doesn't have to and the ebbing tide, the speaker suggests that love and nature
invoke the beauty of her lost lover. He appears here as almost a share a tendency to grow, and then to die. (Unfortunately for
ghost, a little too painful to think about directly. the speaker, however, love doesn't seem to come back as
reliably as the sun and moon.)
Where Imagery appears in the poem: There are also a couple of instances of personification here.
• Lines 1-2 The speaker doesn't call the sun "the sun," but the "light of day"
• Lines 3-4 that "walks the sky," giving the sun legs to walk with. Similarly,
• Lines 5-6 she describes love as "the great tide that treads the shifting
• Line 10 shore, / Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales." In both
• Lines 11-12 of these instances, there's something godly in her metaphor.
The sun becomes, not just the sun, but a person who's leaving
JUXTAPOSITION the sky, and the tide becomes a destructive sea-god, throwing
wreckage around. Both of these metaphors are clearly
In juxtaposing her lover's fading interest in her with the setting connected to the speaker's predicament: her lover has left her,
of the sun, the waning of the moon, the ebbing of the tides, and and now she experiences all of nature as a painful reminder of
the sad beauties of autumn, the speaker of "Pity me not" her heartbreak.
performs a clever trick. Two things are happening here at once.
On the one hand, this juxtaposition allows the speaker to Where Metaphor appears in the poem:
suggest that love is just a natural force like any other, and that
its fading is as inevitable (and as easy to understand) as the • Lines 1-2
sunset or the autumn. • Lines 3-6
• Lines 9-10
But on the other hand, there's an important difference • Lines 11-12
between nature and love. All of the natural phenomena the
speaker mentions here are things that wane, certainly, but
SIBILANCE
they're also things that will definitely come back again. The sun
always rises, the moon waxes as soon as it's finished waning, The whispery, secretive quality of sibilance lends a quiet sense
the tide comes in when it's done going out, and spring of pain and danger to the second half of "Pity me not," and
inevitably follows winter. Love, on the other hand, is less evokes a harsh, bleak, loveless landscape.
reliable: once it's gone away, there's no guarantee at all that it Sibilance often quiets a poem down: there's just no way to yell
will return. an /s/ sound. The reader can spot that effect in line 7, where the
The speaker's efforts to console herself are therefore doubly speaker remarks that it's no surprise that "a man's desire is
futile, not just because the heart can't catch up with the mind's hush
shed so soon." Here, the sibilance creates the very effect it
understanding that all things end, but because even the things describes. The speaker evokes her lover's "hushed" desire with
she tries to compare her experience to aren't complete hushed /s/ and /sh/ sounds.
comparisons. The juxtaposition makes this poem even sadder. Those same sounds can also hint at a more dangerous hiss. In
lines 10-12 ("Than the wide [...] gathered in the gales"), when
Where Juxtaposition appears in the poem: the speaker describes love as a stormy ocean beating against a
beach, sibilance evokes the shifting of the sands and the
• Lines 1-4: “Pity me not because the light of day / At close whoosh of the winds (as well as the frailty of a flower in those
of day no longer walks the sky; / Pity me not for beauties
winds):
passed away / From field and thicket as the year goes
by;”
[...] Love is no more
• Lines 5-8: “Pity me not the waning of the moon, / Nor
Than the wide bloss ssom which the wind ass
ssails,
that the ebbing tide goes out to sea, / Nor that a man’s
desire is hushed so soon, / And you no longer look with Than the great tide that treads the sh
shifting sh
shore,
love on me.” Strewing fresh sh wreckage gathered in the gales [...]

Here, sibilance creates a whole atmosphere, helping the reader

METAPHOR
to feel the speaker's predicament. In her jaded imagination,
"Pity me not" is rich in metaphor
metaphor. The big central metaphor is love becomes shifting and unstable as a sandy beach battered
the easiest one to spot: love, the poem's images insist, is like by a cruel wind.
nature, or is nature, a powerful and all-too-changeable force. In

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Pi
Pity | me not | because
cause | the light | of da
dayy
Where Sibilance appears in the poem:
At close | of da
dayy | no long- | er walks | the sky
sky;
• Line 7: “hushed so soon”
• Line 10: “blossom,” “assails” Notice the stress on the first syllable of the word "pity"? That
• Lines 11-12: “shifting shore, / Strewing fresh” means the word is a trochee
trochee, the foot that goes DUM
DUM-da rather
than the iambic da-DUM
DUM.
Those trochees will turn up at the beginning of a lot of this
VOCABULARY poem's lines—for instance, in the emphatic "Nor
Nor" at the
beginning of lines 6 and 7, and on the dramatic "Strew
Strewing fresh
Pity (Line 1, Line 3, Line 5, Line 13) - Feel sorry for. wreck
wreckage" of line 12. Wherever these trochees appear, they
Thicket (Line 4) - A small, dense clump of trees. add an edge of intensity: leaning hard on that first syllable
makes the speaker sound insistent. The speaker's lament feels
Waning (Line 5) - Diminishing (here used to describe the moon
more pained and more serious because of those trochaic
as it moves from full to new, getting smaller).
stresses.
Ebbing (Line 6) - Withdrawing, receding.
Assails (Line 10) - Attacks, assaults. RHYME SCHEME
Strewing (Line 12) - Throwing messily around; scattering. The rh
rhyme
yme scheme of "Pity me not" is a perfect example of
English sonnet rhyme. Its traditional pattern runs like so:
Wreckage (Line 12) - Bits and pieces of broken debris.
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG
Gales (Line 12) - Stormy winds.
The even, balanced back-and-forth of the alternating rhymes
leads up to the neatness of the final couplet
couplet. In this poem, the
FORM, METER, & RHYME rhyme words stay pretty gentle and small at first ("day" and
"away," "sea" and "me") but rise to drama toward the end with
FORM the wind that "assails" the shore with "gales." Having built up to
this storm, the speaker ends with a return to plainer language,
"Pity me not" is a sonnet
sonnet—a form with a long tradition. Like all
ending with another simple rhyme on "learn" and "turn." The
sonnets, this one uses 14 lines of iambic pentameter and a
final couplet of a sonnet often has the quality of a punchline, a
predictable rh
rhyme
yme scheme
scheme. Since this is an English or
big idea towards which the whole poem builds, and this couplet
Shakespearean sonnet, it divides into three quatr
quatrains
ains (four-line
is no exception. The speaker reflects her helplessness in the
stanzas) and a final couplet
couplet.
face of her emotional predicament in the sad simplicity of her
Sonnets are often used for poems about love—requited or rhyme words.
unrequited, fresh or fading. Their shape suits them well to this
purpose. Aside from their regular pulsing meter
meter, which sounds
a lot like a heartbeat, sonnets traditionally have something SPEAKER
called a volta, or turn—a surprising change in ideas and themes
that comes toward the end of the poem. The speaker of "Pity me not" is, in a word, heartbroken: her
lover no longer cares for her. But she's also philosophical. She
Here, that volta comes in the closing couplet, where, after
sees love as a natural phenomenon, which comes and goes as it
spending the whole poem insisting that she shouldn't be pitied,
pleases, and seems to find some comfort in the beauty of the
the speaker changes her mind, and tells readers why she should
phenomena she compares her love to—even as that beauty
be pitied after all. This gives the poem its weight: after all those
fades.
intellectual explanations, the closing couplet suggests the
power of the speaker's grief. While this speaker is able to think about her situation in broad
terms as a natural part of life, she's also suffering deeply. She
METER can understand intellectually that everything beautiful has to
Since "Pity me not" is a sonnet
sonnet, it uses iambic pentameter: five die. But that doesn't stop her from feeling the pain of that
iambs per line, each with a da-DUM
DUM rhythm (for a total of 10 death.
syllables per line). This is a meter that has often been compared The speaker doesn't specify her gender here, but we're calling
to a heartbeat or to footsteps, and English falls naturally into its her "her" because this sonnet is one of many in Edna St. Vincent
swing. Millay's collected works, and those sonnets are usually told
But as in many sonnets, the iambic meter here isn't steady all from a woman's perspective. (Here, there's also a hint that this
the way through. In fact, there are variations right up front. The speaker is a woman because she refers to "a man's love" as
first lines go like this: something distinct from her own.)

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This blatant injustice sparked protests around the
SETTING world—including one at which Millay was arrested. Sadly, the
protests couldn't save Sacco and Vanzetti, and their execution
"Pity me not" doesn't have one clear setting. However, through
embittered Millay among many others, instilling a widespread
its rich imagery
imagery, it creates an atmosphere of waning natural
cynicism about America's all-too-frequent betrayal of its own
beauty. This poem is set in an emotional autumn, when past
democratic ideals.
glories are fading away, and the sun is setting.
The ocean, with its ebbing tides and dangerous storms, plays a
big role here, too. While the speaker doesn't tell the reader MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES
where she is, in her heart she seems to be wandering a fading
countryside and a desolate seashore. EXTERNAL RESOURCES
• A Celebr
Celebration
ation of Milla
Millayy — Two contemporary poets read
and discuss Millay's work at a Library of Congress event
CONTEXT celebrating Millay's birthday. (https:/
([Link]
[Link]/--
ZmYEuW8IPU)
LITERARY CONTEXT
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was a major poet in her • A Short Biogr
Biograph
aphyy — Read the Poetry Foundation's short
own lifetime, winning a Pulitzer Prize for her thoughtful and biography of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and find links to more
of her poetry. (https:/
([Link]
/[Link]/poets/
.[Link]/poets/
often radical depictions of love and suffering. Her poetry was at
edna-st-vincent-milla
edna-st-vincent-millay) y)
once sincere and playful, and she's remembered for her work's
wit as well as its beauty. • Milla
Millay's
y's P
Poetic
oetic and P
Personal
ersonal Reputation — An article from
Millay was especially well-known for her revitalizing interest in the Guardian on Millay's posthumous reputation.
the sonnet form (this poem was published in 1923, falling into a (https:/
([Link]
/[Link]/books/booksblog/2018/
.[Link]/books/booksblog/2018/
sequence of sonnets that Millay had written starting in 1920). feb/22/edna-st-vincent-milla
feb/22/edna-st-vincent-millay-poetry)
y-poetry)
Following in the footsteps of Shak
Shakespeare
espeare, she brought a • Edna St. Vincent Milla
Millayy Reads the PPoem
oem — A recording of
woman's perspective to a tradition that mostly spoke to women Millay herself reading the poem (accompanied by an
or of women. Her work was noted for its modern take on the unnerving animation). (https:/
([Link]
battle of the sexes: the women in her poems are often just as
• The Milla
Millayy Society — The website of a society dedicated to
cavalier and calculating about love as men were traditionally
Millay's life and work. (http:/
([Link]
/[Link]
.[Link]/
expected to be. (Of course, as in "Pity me not," they suffer, too.)
aboutmilla
[Link]
.php))
Some of Millay's contemporaries compared her to Sappho for
her frankness about love. But her formal, lyrical verse was seen LITCHARTS ON OTHER EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
as a bit out of step with the stylish, experimental Modernism of POEMS
her contemporaries Eliot and Poundound. Her poetic reputation • I, Being born a WWoman
oman and Distressed (Sonnet 41)
thus declined after her death, until later writers like Mary • The Buck in the Snow
Oliv
Oliver
er rediscovered her. Today, she's seen as an influential and • What lips mmyy lips ha
havve kissed, and where, and wh
whyy (Sonnet
important poet. 43)
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Over the course of her poetic career in the first half of the 20th HOW T
TO
O CITE
century, Millay watched in horror as two World Wars shredded
the comparative peace and prosperity of the America she was
MLA
born into. Her strong and idealistic political convictions were
often put to the test by the cruelties of the world around her. Nelson, Kristin. "Pity me not because the light of day (Sonnet 29)."
For instance, she struggled with the conflict between her LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 17 Sep 2020. Web. 3 Nov 2020.
pacifism and her belief that the United States must play a part CHICAGO MANUAL
in World War II.
Nelson, Kristin. "Pity me not because the light of day (Sonnet 29)."
Millay was directly involved in one of the biggest controversies LitCharts LLC, September 17, 2020. Retrieved November 3, 2020.
of early 20th-century America: the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, [Link]
Italian immigrants and anarchists falsely accused of murder. not-because-the-light-of-day-sonnet-29.
The pair were convicted and sentenced to execution by in a trial
obviously corrupted by anti-immigrant and anti-anarchist bias.

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