Cathernet's Ill Figurative Language

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Love can be both painful and pleasurable. This is something anyone can relate to and understand deeply. Love can bring contentment and joy in the past and it can also bring heartache and pain in the future. In Edna St, Vincent Millay’s poem, “ONLY UNTIL THIS CIGARETTE HAS ENDED,” we see that the speaker is having a cigarette whilst contemplating her lover. Edna St. Vincent Millay uses symbolism, diction, and figurative language in her poem to suggest that the speaker has a painful time moving on and forgetting the lover, even though the lover has already moved on. Symbolism in the poem is used to describe a painful setting. That setting is used to symbolize the pain the speaker is experiencing when she is reflecting on her lover. The phrase, …show more content…

During the second half of the sonnet, it describes the speaker reflecting the lover in the phrase, “I will permit my memory to recall”(7). The poet uses the word permit when the speaker is recollecting his or her memories. The word permit might also mean authorization, granting, or allow. The word suggests that the speaker only allows a short time to think of her lover “only until this cigarette has ended”(1). This means that the times that she does not smoke his cigarette, the speaker would not authorize or grant himself the permission to envision her lover. By analyzing this phrase, we see that the thought of the speaker’s lover in her mind is too painful to bear that she only allows a minimum amount of time for reflection. In lines 10 to 12, we see that the speaker has forgotten the face of her lover, colours and features alike, but “the words not ever, and the smiles not yet”(12). The poet uses the words “not ever” and “not yet” to tell us that she has not fully forgotten the lover and still has a lingering impression of her lover from the words and the smiles. The words that are used in the poem describe the speaker having a hard time trying to forget the

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