Away Melancholy Flashcards
Summary
Speaker tries to cast their deep saddness away, telling themselves to let it go
Themes
Despair & hope
Humanity vs nature
Start (2)
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Speaker must’ve been struggling w/ a long saddness
Anaphora: implies the sorrow is hard to get rid of, one ‘away won’t do it
2nd verse (2)
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy. (‘Take that melancholy, the world is beautiful’)
Speaker turned to nature for comfort, but her melancholy doesn’t seem to have responded to this treatment.
natural / elemental imagery:
–> suggests rest of the world goes on (she wants melancholy to go so she can also move on)
–>suggestive of universality of melancholy (melancholy is part of the world the same way trees/rivers are)
3rd stanza
The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat.
Away, melancholy. (‘Oh no, that made it worse
Focuses on creature (ant): looking for consolidation in nature, speaker only finds reminder that a creature is always on their way to eat or being eaten
all ‘hurry[ing]’ is only a hurry towards the grave
4th stanza (3)
Man, too, hurries,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
hurries: humanity also kills time until they’re ‘burri[d]’
Quotidian behaviour:
-suggests mundane activities around her are still going on (wants melancholy to leave for her to continue w/ her life)
-melancholy for her is ever-present throughout everyday activities
‘Let it go’ could hint at soeaker trying to let go of diapointment that humans are justa animals living meaningless lives
5th stanza (2)
Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.
People are different than animals bc they can both imagine + love the idea of goodness
They love goodness so much they call it God
6th stanza (3)
Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man’s thoughts, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man’s good, growing,
By man’s called God.
Away, melancholy, let it go.
‘Tears + war’ question goodness
4th line: the world is still full of suffering, so ‘Can God stone of man’s thoughts, be good?’
5-8 line: as long as people keep believing goodness is the ultimate power, world isn’t hopeless + melancholy can’t win
7th stanza (1)
Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;
rather than just ‘eat[ing], coupl[ing]’ and dying, people also long for love + try to reach goodness
End
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go
Refrain (same as beginning) –> now these words sound different
Ending: the mere existence of love & faith is enough reason to have love and faith
Refrain of ‘away melancholy’ (2)
Every time these words appear, their meaning evolves
As poem goes on, speaker has real reason to let go of melancholy (speaker finds hope in idea that people believe in good even in the worst of times)
Speaker’s final perspective:
Melancholy might be terrible but it’s also whats amazing about human consciousness
(After all, who met a melancholy ant?)
To have the capacity to feel sad that the world can be meaningless & cruel is also to have the capacity to imagine what meaning and goodness would look like, & to believe in them + love them
Structure
Free verse (no meter + no regular rhyme scheme) :
Poem shifts its shape as her thoughts do (mirror constantly changing thoughts)
