Lament

The 22-line poem, written in free verse and structured into a single stanza, is considered a dirge. A dirge is a song, hymn, or lamentation expressing grief. While she is addressing her children, the mother’s lament is more of a soliloquy than a dialogue. A soliloquy in literature is when a speaker engages in the act of talking to oneself, whereas a dialogue is a conversation between two or more people. The poem’s form conveys the idea that the children may not even be present at the time the mother is speaking—in any case, they are not given a voice in the poem. This implies that perhaps the mother is practicing what she will say to their children upon their return home. The use of free verse allows the mother’s speech to take on a more natural tone as she addresses her children.

While there is no formal metering to the poem, Millay utilizes parallel structure as part of the poem’s form. Parallel structure is the use of the same word pattern to show that two or more ideas have the same level of meaning.