The Courage That My Mother Had

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1956

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Millay often wrote in rhyme and meter, mastering forms like the sonnet. The rhyming iambic tetrameter of “The courage that my mother had” operates as a tightly-woven rhythm, with each line made out of four of poetic feet, each adhering to the unstressed-stressed pattern almost without exception. Each stanza’s rhyme scheme is ABAB—the first and third lines rhyme, as do the second and fourth—creating a sense of order and pattern. In constructing this form, Millay echoes her speaker’s desire for structure and order in the wake of her mother’s death, and the poem represents her attempts to grasp it.

In two key moments, Millay uses metrical and rhyme substitutions or deviations to underscore the emotional reality of her speaker, and clarify the relationship between the speaker and her mother. After establishing her meter in the first two lines, Millay writes: “Rock from New England quarried” (Line 3). The line still has four beats, but it begins with a trochee, a poetic foot that comprises a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (“rock” is stressed while “from” isn’t). By substituting this alternate stress pattern in this line, Millay emphasizes this description of the mother, which is key to understanding the speaker’s purpose in the poem.

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The final line, “Has no more need of, and I have” (Line 12), also makes use of rhythmic substitutions and a break from the rhyme scheme. The line slots in a spondee, or two stressed syllables in a row (“more need”), and a pyrrhic foot, or two unstressed syllables in a row (“of, and”). It also switches from a standard rhyme to a visual rhyme: “Have” looks like it should rhyme with “grave” in line 10, but it does not when spoken aloud. Switching the meter and the rhyme in the final line draws attention to Millay’s deviation from the standard elegy: here the speaker has not achieved consolation. Rather, she remains in need of courage, and the poem ends on a word that sounds like a sob or sigh.

Repetition and Simple Language

Throughout “The courage that my mother had,” Millay repeats phrases, images, and verbs, creating a sense that the speaker is ruminating. The speaker’s diction is simple, conveying information in a measured way that often sounds like self-talk. Millay’s repetitions begin in the second line, where she writes “Went with her, and is with her still.” She repeats words like “granite” (Line 4) and “rock” (Lines 3, 11), as well as the verb “wear” (Lines 5, 6) and the noun “thing” (Lines 7, 10). While the repetition draws attention to each of these words, they purposefully lack specificity. Choosing to repeat a vague word like “thing” in a poem this short is intentional; Millay’s speaker wants to connect the two disparate items (the brooch and courage), and also convey her inability to utilize either.

Tone

The tone of “The courage that my mother had,” or the poet’s attitude toward the poem’s subject matter, is simultaneously wistful, grief-stricken, and fearful. Millay’s use of the golden brooch, and phrases like “I have no thing I treasure more” (Line 7), establish the speaker as earnest and sentimental, full of yearning for her dead mother. While the speaker lingers on the memory of her mother wearing the brooch, her fear of not being to cope without her mother’s courage undergirds the entire poem. In the first stanza, the speaker establishes that “courage” is with her dead mother, in the distant “granite hill” (Line 4). In the second stanza, she alludes to her anxiety: She cannot fully enjoy the memory of her mother that the brooch provides, because she is troubled by the fact that the brooch is not useful to her, and “is something I could spare” (Line 8). In the final stanza, the speaker’s fear becomes palpable, as the poem ends not with resignation or contentment, but with the knowledge that the speaker does not have, and cannot access, the courage she believes she needs.