Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1931

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

“Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls” is a sonnet in the Shakespearean or English tradition, which indicates three quatrains, or stanzas of four lines each, followed by a couplet, or a stanza of two lines, composed in an end-rhyme pattern of abab cdcd efef gg. (Note: Some printings of the poem omit stanza breaks, so that all 14 lines are spaced evenly; the rhyme scheme remains.)

The sonnet is a fixed verse form characterized by 14 lines. Its name derives from the Italian word for little song. While not always a love poem, the sonnet has long been a popular choice for romantic verse. “Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls” adheres to a meter of ten syllables per line. Many of the lines are in iambs. An iamb is a metric foot characterized by an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Iambs create a rising meter: ba-DUM, ba-DUM, ba-DUM:

(o)r RICH with RED coRUNdum OR with BLUE (Line 2)

A variation in this pattern comes at the last line, which begins with a stressed syllable followed by an anapest, or a foot composed of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable:

LOOK what (i) HAVE!— (Line 14)

After the anapest, the line reverts to iambs:

(a)nd THESE are ALL for YOU (Line 14)

This type of meter generally results in a very stable line, and can convey a sense of confidence and authority coming from the speaker.

Rhyme & Alliteration

“Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls” employs a formal rhyme scheme, designated as abab cdcd, efef, gg, which means that for each four-line stanza, alternating lines rhyme, and for the last stanza, a couplet, both lines end in words that rhyme with one another. While end rhyme fell out of fashion in the latter half of the twentieth century (and even before, with the rise of unrhymed free verse imagist and modernist poetry), it has been an element of fixed verse for centuries. End rhyme creates a specific kind of music by both setting an expectation for the reader and delivering a surprise. The association of “pearls” (Line 1) and “girls” (Line 3), “blue” (Line 2) with “you” (Line 4), and even “plain” (Line 6) with “brain” (Line 8) gives the reader something to think about, in addition to making music.

Rhyming verse also provides a constraint for the poet who must then find words to fit the music of the form.

Alliteration is the repetition of an initial consonant sound in words that occur in proximity to one another. Examples of alliteration in “Not In A Silver Casket Cool With Pearls” is the repetition of the “r” sounds in the second line: “Or rich with red corundum” (Line 2). Likewise, the poet repeats a hard “c” sound with “casket cool” (Line 1) and “corundum” (Line 2), building a sharpness into the lyric as well as a coolness.

Later in the poem, the repetition of the “s” sound in “Semper fidelis, where secret spring” (Line 7) lends a hissing quality to the line.

Punctuation

Although Millay did not necessarily write her sonnets and other poetry with the notion of performing it aloud, she did, in fact, perform her work in public quite often and was famous for her performances. Punctuation within a poem is an effective tool for instructing the reader on how to “hear” it in their head the way the poet intended them to experience it. Punctuation guides the performer and the reader on where and how to pause, which can be translated as when and how to breathe.

A comma indicates a short pause. While it is not strictly necessary to put a comma at the end of a line—typically, the ending of a line will naturally encourage a pause, however brief—a comma can enforce the syntactical choice to take a breath before continuing on to the next line. “Or rich with red corundum or with blue,” (Line 2) is enjambed, or continued, to line three: “Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls” (Line 3). The comma after “blue” (Line 2) enforces the pause, so that the reader is prepared for the stressed syllable on the next line: “Locked” (Line 3), which is also followed by a comma, causing the stressed work to be enclosed between commas, between pauses, literally encased between breaths, thus elevating its import and impact.

Another example of punctuation includes the use of the colon to introduce the turn, or shift in perspective, of the poem: “Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain: / Love in the open hand” Lines 8-9). The colon appears again in the penultimate line: “I bring you, calling out as children do: / “Look at what I have!—And these are all for you” (Lines 13-14). Here, the speaker introduces a bit of imaginary dialogue and thus aligns herself with childhood innocence and enthusiasm, further supported by an exclamation point: “Look what I have!—” (Line 14), and an em-dash, a held breath, before the ultimate declarative statement of generosity: “And these are all for you” (Line 14), full stop.