"The Mill" by Edwin Arlington Robinson pg835

       The Mill presents the conclusion of a struggling husband and wife who own a small mill that is forcing them to find a way to make ends meet.  The husband finally confesses, " 'There are no millers anymore," meaning they have been put out of business.  The poem is dated 1920 when the industrial revolution was paving the way for the economy, so the miller's words are more than just a temporary absence, but the end of the use of the mill.  That evening she waits for him until, "The tea was cold, the fire was dead." When she finally heads over to the mill, she finds him hanging form a beam, "What else there was would only seem/ To say again what he had meant;/ And what was hanging from a beam."  She then concludes she has nothing left to live for, no husband or job, and drowns herself in the water that once moved the mill and was their livelihood.