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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.
The train is perhaps the biggest symbol and metaphor in the poem. Symbolically, it not only represents progress and expansion, but it also represents freedom and movement. It is the counter and the answer to the speaker’s stasis, yet it is always moving far in the distance. Contextually, it signifies the key to mobility and freedom, with current place and situation rendering it inaccessible for the speaker. It is both persistent and even unsettling (Millay uses “shrieking” [Line 4] to describe it). It entices and startles. Perhaps it is the inner voice of the speaker, themself.
Place plays a fundamental symbolic role in “Travel.” In its literal sense, it is both a destination to and a coveted departure from somewhere. For male writers at the time, it was unbridled territory. For the speaker in “Travel,” place is static, with the exception of night and day. Agency within it is non-existent. With the birth of a new day, the cycle of longing begins. Everything is prevalent in the daylight, signifying the speaker’s isolation even amongst others. The nightscape is a dream of access. The train is the only seam weaving in and out of the fragmented times of day.
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
An Ancient Gesture
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Conscientious Objector
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Ebb
Edna St. Vincent Millay
I Will Put Chaos Into Fourteen Lines
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Lament
Edna St. Vincent Millay
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