"Recuerdo" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Recuerdo”

We were very tired, we were very merry–

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable–

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;                             

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry–

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;                    

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

We hailed, "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,         

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

-Edna St. Vincent Millay

In Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem "Recuerdo," a couple enjoys a night of riding back and forth on a ferry, staying out all night and stopping off at different places. The couple go to dinner, lie on a hilltop and look at the sky, and buy apples and pears that they eat as they watch the sun rise. In the morning they see a poor woman who they buy a morning paper from that they never read, and give her all of their apples and pears, as well as all the money they have besides their subway fare. The poem closes with the woman being so grateful she cries and blesses the two.

What is so beautiful about this poem is the sense we get from the speaker. It would sound as if she was a young girl, experiencing love for the first time and wanting to remember every bit of it. The title is even called "Recuerdo," literally "to remember" in Spanish. Also, probably the most distinct aspect to this poem is the repetition. "We were very tired, we were very merry–/We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;" appears as the first two lines of each of the three stanzas. She stresses this, as if this sheer fact of staying out all night, exhausted and elated, is all she needs to convey to her audience the excitement of it all. She repeats this in the first two lines of each stanza, and the other lines are what tell the story.


The rhyme scheme is also very consistent throughout: AABBCC AADDEE AAFFGG, in this eighteen line poem, every two lines rhyme with each other. It helps draw continuity in the sometimes scattered thoughts of the young girl in her excitement.

The tone is whimsical and magical. Everything about the night they had was perfect, the night, “...we lay on a hill-top underneath the moon,” (line 5) even the ending of it all, when “...the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold” (line 12). The descriptions of the events in this way shape the tone to make it one of fantasy and elation. The poem serves to capture the memory of one meaningful night, where the narrator spends all night out and has difficulty explaining in words, thus the repetition of the first two lines, just how special it truly was.