Edna St. Vincent Millay's The Courage My Mother Had

“The Courage My Mother Had” by Edna St. Vincent Millay was a very touching poem for me to read. Edna was a poet during the late 1800s to the mid-1900s. The poem was about a girl’s mother who passed away and the writer explains what courage her mother had which then was passed on to her daughter. This poem had left an impact on me when I had finished reading it because of such loss. Though I cannot say I had lost my mother but I did lose my sister a few years ago. So therefore reading this poem about losing someone very important in your life is something I can relate to very well. Death is very terrible but it helps you build the courage for a stronger life. This poem reveals a contrast between material possessions and human values through

She leaves you with a heavy heart. She uses such emotion that you can feel what she’s feeling. You can feel that the speaker is feeling such despair she misses her mother terribly. One thing that was mentioned a lot in the poem is the courage her mother had which now lives on through her. She’s trying to explain that love and human life is worth so much more than anything materialistic. The speaker doesn’t mention until the last stanza that her mother is dead in the ending of the poem is when the poet confronted it directly. The poet states this by saying “the thing she took into her grave” which is when the reader knows her mother is gone. The poem consists of three quatrains, or four line stanzas. Within the poem the final of the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth line rhyme. Each line appears to be arranged in iambic tetrameter. Which means the first syllable is unstressed and the second syllable is stressed. The poem also uses repetition when the poet repeats the courage that my mother had in the title and then again the first line of the poem. Repetition is a sound device that consists of repeated words or phrases. When you read the poem you notice that each stanza expresses a complete