Edna St. Vincent Millay is a poet from Maine who wrote during the early twentieth century. She died in 1950. According to Poetry Out Loud, she was "as famous during her lifetime for her red-haired beauty, unconventional lifestyle, and outspoken politics as for her poetry."
Key terms: dirge, lyrical, imagery, enjambment
Dirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,—but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
First of all: doesn't it seem like Poetry Out Loud is a bit death-obsessed these days? Maybe it's just me. Maybe it's the poetry. But I feel like we've been reading a lot of poems like this. Anyway, a dirge is traditionally a lamenting song for the dead; dirges are usually sung at funerals. A dirge without music could be one that the narrator feels no one else can join in on, or one that's not traditional/breaking with common conceptions, etc. The poem is certainly a meditation on what is not right about death and the dead - that we sing dirges at their funerals in attempt to "remember" them, but in reality only "A formula, a phrase remains, --but the best is lost." The narrator is shamed to think about how we bury our dead, attempting to "honor" and "remember" something that is not even all of them, not even a part of them. Unlike the Romantics that we've been studying in Honors English 10, she is "not resigned" to accept that nature continues while man is buried. She seems to be searching for something else... I wonder what it is. It might not be a bad thing to find.
http://www.poetryoutloud.org/poem/237262
I agree mostly. But I think she is saying that nature will never be as beautiful as a human life. And like you said, she doesn't believe that putting people into "the dull, the indiscriminate dust" is a beautiful way to celebrate and reflect the beauty and depth of everything a person is.
ReplyDeleteAnd I was thinking that the "dirge without music" was attributing to that as well. The words without music would be so plain and dull. And again, an awful way to celebrate a person.
Nice, Kylie! I like your focus on "celebrating a person." We were talking about this in 2nd hour-- as a culture, we try to make funerals into times of celebrating life rather than feeling down about death. Really interesting analogy that the title serves to illustrate this. Without music, it's just not a dirge. It's not as compelling. It's a disappointing way to honor someone. Bigger picture though- I'm wondering if this means that songs are more valuable than poetry? Can this be an implication of this rather specific poem?
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