American Poet and Playwright

Writer Recieved Pulitzers Prize for Poetry in

1923.This poem written in 1928
-combined 'modernist' attitudes within
traditional forms
Literal meaning A deer is walking in
the snow and gets
shot
Metaphorical Meaning Mourning of the death
of nature
3 points Peaceful and Pure,
Chaos and
Destruction,Passing
of time and Death
structure - some rhyme showing
majestic and peace
- gets broken after the
death of the buck to
show how nature has
been tarnished
- religious imagery
"white sky" - heavenly
- creates a sense of foreboding as
skies are usually blue
- why didn't a higher presence
interfere?
"hemlocks" - pine trees
- poison but natural
and pure
"apple orchard" - metaphor
- biblical reference (adam and
eves garden)

"I saw them. I saw - repetition

them" - caesura
- sense of sight
- emphasises presence
of buck and its effect on
the narrator
"wild blood" - uncontrollable
- animalistic

second stanza - buck shot very

suddenly

"strange" - curious
unexplainable tone
"heavy hemlocks" Alliteration

"life" Personified

"long leaps lovely" - light tone

- alliteration
- use of assonance which slows
"over the stone hedge down the poem
wall into the woods" - religious metaphor for exiting the
garden of Eden
"bringing to his - repetition
knees.. bringing.." - you are prey when
brought to knees
- alliterative
"shift their loads a - metaphor for nature mourning of
little, letting fall a death.
- placing down a leaf for the buck
feather of snow" (as if the buck is the leaf and has
fallen from the tree of life)

Enjambment - not many full stops to

demonstrate Millay's overflow of
emotions when describing both
the beauty of nature and the
horror of injustice of poaching
- full stop used after death of
buck -> creates a pause for the
reader, allowing them to reflect
on the immorality of hunting