:: poetry - love and death ::

something about the last line of "keen" (edna st. vincent millay) haunts me. it's a beautiful poem, and on first read, it sounds sad. but I wonder. is it really describing a tragedy?

Weep him dead and mourn as you may,

Me, I sing as I must:

Blessèd be Death, that cuts in marble

What would have sunk to dust!

Blessèd be Death, that took my love

And buried him in the sea,

Where never a lie nor a bitter word

Will out of his mouth at me.

This I have to hold to my heart,

This to take by the hand:

Sweet we were for a summer month

As the sun on the dry white sand;

Mild we were for a summer month

As the wind from over the weirs.

And blessèd be Death, that hushed with salt

The harsh and slovenly years!

Who builds her house with love for timber

Builds her a house of foam.

And I'd liefer be bride to a lad gone down

Than widow to one safe home.

   except for the lines "sweet we were for a summer month" and "mild we were for a summer month", this young woman might seem pessimistic and cynical -- but she obviously loved the man who drowned. 

   that might be what makes the poem sad, except that I wonder if she really did. first they were "sweet", then they were "mild" (as if their love was waning already); all the descriptions of how they loved each other are transient. seasons are almost always symbols of change (especially with millay: "road to avrille" or this or this) -- summer turns to fall and feelings die -- and the wind and the foam are appropriately momentary to resemble temporary love. 

   her reaction, too, is more relieved than sorrowful. she is glad that death took him, before their love could dissolve into nothing, before she would have to live with his rejection and dislike. her sorrow over his death can be real: she can remember and mourn him truly, while she actually has something to mourn. she'd "built her a house of foam", a relationship based on nothing but momentary feeling. so she is thankful to have the dreams, the memories, without the heartbreak and disillusionment of reality.

   this girl would rather the man she loved dead: had he lived, their love would have died, and she is glad to remember him without pain. true love is selfless, serving, lasting until old age (even if that means undergoing "the harsh and slovenly years"). their love wasn't.

   and that, I think, is the true tragedy of the poem.