Penelope, the weaver, is a literary reference to fidelity.
While Odysseus is absent, Penelope is pretended by several men, who settle in the palace and nastily eat her banquets, while waiting for the queen to choose one of them. To maintain her fidelity, Penelope tells the suitors that she will accept a new husband when she finishes weaving a shroud for King Laertes, on whom she was working. To prolong this task as long as possible, Penelope undoes at night what she weaves during the day, however, a woman betrays her an tell the other men, so she is forced to finish the job. Odysseus returns just in time, killing the suitors .
Answer:
Explanation:
The poet of these lines, Edna St. Vincent Millay, imagines a speaker who is sick of spring and everything that goes along with the season changing. Millay employs word choice such as "stickily" in order to make the beauty of new leaves growing on the trees seem grotesque. She also names the leaves as "little" further diminishing the importance of the season changing. The speaker calls out directly to April in the first line ("To what purpose, April, do you return again?"). This line can be read as threatening or condecensing in light of the word choice in the poem as the speaker is angry at April's return. The speaker concluses that "I know what I know," marking themselves as more knowledgable about the world than spring and April.
