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Edna St. Vincent MillayA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Conscientious Objector” is a free-verse poem with 13 long lines divided into four stanzas. In books like Collected Lyrics—which was originally edited by Millay herself and, after her death, by her sister Norma—a line longer than the width of the page is indicated by indenting the content spilling onto the following line. Readers unfamiliar with this poetic printing convention might overlook the indentation of half the lines and, in this way, the poem can appear to have 24 lines. Further complicating this is that some publications break Millay’s long lines, but not necessarily in the places where the lines spill over and are indented in Collected Lyrics.
The poem’s long lines do not have a consistent meter. Millay often combines two sentences in one line using semicolons or colons, such as in Lines 2, 3, 5, 8, and 12. Other long sentences use introductory elements followed by a comma, such as the lines that begin with “Though” (Lines 6 and 10). Lines 1 and 13—the first and last lines—are the shortest of the poem. Line 1 reaches, but does not spill over, the edge of the page, and Line 13 is only six syllables (four words) long.
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
An Ancient Gesture
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ebb
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Lament
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Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Song of a Second April
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Spring
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Courage That My Mother Had
Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Spring And The Fall
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Travel
Edna St. Vincent Millay