The Courage That My Mother Had

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).