Away Melancholy
- Created by: nyxienyx
- Created on: 28-01-23 15:57
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- Away Melancholy
- She taps into humanity’s basic, decent nature, its strength, and goodness. Humans, she reminds the reader, are also animals and are just as much a part of the instinctual natural world as an ant is.
- explores the prominent theme of nature. This includes human nature/instinct and non-human nature
- uses an ant, the wind, and the rain, as a way to bring someone’s melancholy back around reality. When the world spins on, she’s essentially asking, what reason do you have to feel sorrow?
- nine stanza poem that is separated into stanzas of varying lengths. The first stanza is two lines, followed by three five-line stanzas, the fifth and sixth stanzas have ten lines, the seventh has four, the eighth: eight, and the ninth: two
- appears to be casting “melancholy” off. She’s willing it away with the effort of her words, asking herself, and anyone listening to “let it go
- The elements of the world are aligned and working just as they always do. This is something to take pleasure and comfort in. It should be enough to banish any sense of melancholy.
- the ant carrying “his meat.” Everything, like the ant, is going about its business. It’s ready to “be eaten or eat.” The refrain of “away, melancholy” at the end of the stanza feels like an invocation of goodwill. It becomes a mantra.
- fourth stanza connects the behavior of the ant and the broader animal world to the human world. Human beings are also going about their lives. They are hurrying and coupling. The speaker reminds the reader that humans are also animals and have instincts and simple joys to fill their lives with
- fifth and sixth stanzas are the longest of the poem. In the first, the speaker brings God, or the idea of a god, into the poem
- sixth stanza transitions into first-person, using the pronoun “me.” She asks that no one talk to her of the terrible things in life or ask if God can be “good.” She wants everyone to know that it’s enough that humanity is good, or was made good.
- speaker’s hope in life comes from the fact that there is love and that humanity aspires “To good” and “To love.” Even in the darkest moments of life, when one is dying inter own blood, humanity raises an eye to the sky and “Cries, Love, love.” There is no reason to delve into the failings of humankind, the speaker says. It’s more interesting to consider the depths of humanity’s goodness
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