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Away, Melancholy
The poem's speaker suffers from a dreadful melancholy, a
SUMMARY sorrow that seems to permeate the whole world. Doing their
best to cast this sadness away, they try to cheer up by looking
The speaker tries to cast their deep sadness away, telling
out at nature: "Are not the trees green / The earth as green?
themselves to let it go (all through the poem, they'll repeat this
Does not the wind blow […]?" In other words: Doesn't nature
refr
refrain
ain).
keep on going no matter what, and isn't that beautiful?
Looking for consolation, the speaker reflects that the world
But in this speaker's painful state, these traditional
keeps going on: trees and the earth are green, the wind blows,
consolations aren't enough. Sure, nature's eternal cycles might
fire jumps up and rivers run. The speaker repeats their refrain,
be beautiful, but they also remind the speaker that "All things
telling their sadness to go away.
hurry / To be eaten or eat." In other words, life is just a
The ant busily looks for food, and just like all the other animals, meaningless struggle for survival, in which people and "ant[s]"
it lives its life either eating or being eaten. The speaker again alike bustle around "eat[ing]" and "coupl[ing]" (or having sex)
tells their sadness to go away. until it's time for them to be "bur[ied]." This speaker is clearly so
Humanity, the speaker goes on, also bustles around like an ant, deep in their sadness that even the idea that the world goes on
eating, reproducing, and dying; humans are animals too. The in spite of their sadness can't do them much good.
speaker again tells themselves to let their sadness go. This grim predicament, however, lets hope in the back door. It's
Of all animals, the speaker says, humanity is the best. (In an easy to feel that life is nasty
nasty,, brutish, and short
short, the speaker
aside, the speaker tells their sadness to go away.) Humans are reflects, but somehow, people still manage to find meaning, and
the only animals that set up a sacred stone, pour all their own that in itself is miraculous. Even in a world full of "tyranny,"
goodness into it, and call it God. "pox" (or disease), and "wars," people believe in goodness—so
Therefore, the speaker says, don't even talk about cruelty, much so that they learn to call their ideal of goodness "God"
disease, and war; don't bother asking whether the image and worship it. It's "enough," the speaker says, to know that
people call God can possibly be good and loving. people go on believing in the love and goodness they call God
even when they're "beaten, corrupted, dying." This capacity for
Instead, reflect that it's astonishing that people go on believing
belief in the face of horror is so beautiful and astonishing that
in the ideal of goodness that they call God. The speaker tells
the mere thought of it should itself give people hope.
themselves to let their sadness go.
Alas, melancholy can't be banished so easily. The poem's
Humanity, the speaker says, tries to be good, and sighs
constant refrain of "Away, melancholy" suggests that the
longingly for love.
speaker needs to push their sadness back over and over;
Battered, beaten down, dying in a pool of blood, humanity still marveling at humanity's persistent belief in the good isn't a
looks to the heavens and cries out, "Love!" This is astonishing, cure-all. But then, that's exactly the poem’s point. Reaching out
the speaker says: humanity's goodness is what's for hope and love even in the depths of "melancholy," trying to
incomprehensible, not humanity's failings. "let it go," the speaker practices what they preach, making just
One last time, the speaker cries: go away, melancholy. Let it go. the leap of faith the poem describes. Hope, this poem suggests,
doesn't mean pretending the world’s sorrows don't exist or
don't matter, but confronting them—and believing in goodness
THEMES anyway.

DESPAIR AND HOPE Where this theme appears in the poem:

"Away, Melancholy" depicts the struggle to find hope • Lines 1-48
and beauty in an often terrible world. Trying to
banish their "melancholy" (or heavy, persistent sorrow), the
poem's speaker takes comfort in the thought that, even in the
HUMANITY VS. NATURE
worst circumstances, humanity somehow manages to believe in Humanity, this poem suggests, is both part of nature
the ideals of goodness and love. Rather than asking why the and separate from it, and that par
parado
adoxx is what makes
world is so awful, the speaker concludes, people should marvel people special, wonderful, and awe-inspiring.
at the fact that humanity’s faith in "virtue" and "love" persists in This poem's "melancholy" (or deeply sorrowful) speaker
spite of it all. reflects that human beings and animals are basically the same:

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they live out their little lives waiting either "to be eaten or eat." reason for being.
There's no difference in the way that a human being and an The speaker begins the second stanza of their quest to escape
animal "eats, couples, buries" (eats, reproduces, and dies, that melancholy by doing what poets have often done: turning to
is). People are subject to just the same urges and cycles as the the natural world for comfort. After all:
rest of nature—and their lives, in this way, aren’t any more
meaningful than an ant's. Are not the trees green
green,
However, there's a clear difference between animals and human The earth as green
green?
beings, too: the ability to reflect on this predicament and get
"melancholy" about it in the first place! In fact, the speaker's The speaker's diacope on the word "green" paints a picture of a
melancholy sits right next to what they feel makes humanity lush landscape, verdant as far as the eye can see. In the face of
"superlative" (or superior, best of all): the ability to imagine and such loveliness, the speaker's rhetorical question seems to ask,
aspire to something better, richer, and more meaningful than who could despair? For that matter, as long as "the wind
eat-or-be-eaten brutality. Humanity, the speaker observes with blow[s], / Fire leap[s] and the rivers flow," who could doubt that
wonder, is the only animal that could come up with the concept the world's beauty and the cycles of nature are bigger and
of "goodness," let alone believe in it. more enduring than any one person's sadness?
Being human, in this poem, thus means being at once an animal The cry of "Away, melancholy" that ends the stanza seems to
and something more than an animal. Self-awareness and the say, That ought to do it. But as the next stanza will show, this
capacity to reflect are what make people "melancholy" (who particular speaker's melancholy doesn't surrender to natural
ever saw a melancholy ant?) and what makes them beauty as readily as, say, Mary Oliv
Oliver's
er's does.
"superlative," miraculous creatures.
LINES 8-12
Where this theme appears in the poem: The ant is ...
... Away, melancholy.
• Lines 8-27
In the second stanza, the speaker turned to nature for comfort,
like many poets before and since. But their melancholy doesn't
seem to have responded to this treatment. Instead, the
LINE-BY
LINE-BY-LINE
-LINE ANAL
ANALYSIS
YSIS speaker's gloom makes them see even nature as rather
depressing.
LINES 1-7
Turning from the natural world to its creatures, the speaker
Away, melancholy, ... observes "the ant" as it bustles around, remarking on how "he
... Away melancholy. carrieth his meat." Here, the poem's language takes on the tone
"Away, Melancholy" begins by painting a portrait of its of a biblical proverb: the elevated, old-fashioned "carrieth"
speaker's sadness: (which just means "carries") suggests that the speaker is once
again observing a part of nature that is always the same and will
Away, melancholy, always be the same.
Away with it, let it go. That "always and forever" tone makes the next two lines feel all
the grimmer:
This speaker, readers gather, must have been struggling with
melancholy—a profound, enduring sadness, even a All things hurry
depression—for a long time. They're ready to be done with it To be eaten or eat.
now. But melancholy can't be turfed out so easily as all that.
Even the speaker's anaphor
anaphoraa on the word "away" makes it clear Looking for consolation in nature, the speaker manages to find
that this sorrow is hard to budge: one "away" won't do it. only a reminder that this is an ant-eat-ant world and that no
For that matter, the speaker isn't just pushing melancholy away, matter how any creature bustles around, it's always on its way
but telling themselves to "let it go," words that suggest the to either eating or being eaten. All "hurry[ing]" is only a hurry
speaker may find melancholy as hard to resist as it is to endure. toward the grave.
The world, after all, is full of things to despair about. In that light, the refr
refrain
ain takes on a different tone. The last time
Written in flexible free vverse
erse (with no set rh
rhyme
yme scheme or the speaker cried "Away, melancholy," it might have sounded as
meter
meter), the poem will shift its shape just as the speaker's if they were saying, "Take that, melancholy! The world is
thoughts do. Within this ever-changing shape, the words of the beautiful!" Now it feels more as if they're batting back a
first stanza will become a refr
refrain
ain: the poem's backbone and its resurgence of despair: "Oh no, that made it worse! Get away!"

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LINES 13-17 Humanity is in fact "superlative," the speaker declares; in other
Man, too, hurries, ... words, humanity is the best, the greatest, the par
paragon
agon of
... let it go. animals
animals. Why? Because humanity can imagine not just meaning,
but goodness. More than that, humanity can value goodness.
As the fourth stanza begins, the speaker's effort to find beauty
and meaning in nature seems to have backfired. Looking deeply The speaker explores this idea through the dreamlike image of
into the natural world teaches the speaker only that the circle humanity raising a sacred "stone" and worshiping it as a god.
of life drags everything toward death. Humanity is in no way Here, the speaker's repetitions trace the growth of something
exempt from this fate. divine:

In fact, human beings are "animal[s] also," just like the ant of the Into the stone, the god
third stanza. The speaker underscores that point with a Pours what he knows of good
moment of polyptoton
polyptoton: just as "all things hurry / To be eaten or Calling, good
good, God
God.
eat," "Man, too, hurries
hurries." Rushing to eat and reproduce, the
speaker warns, humanity is also just bustling around killing
The first "god," the speaker argues, is humanity itself. By
time, until at last they're "burie[d]." The slant rh
rhyme
yme between
"pour[ing] what he knows of good" into that sacred stone,
"hurries" and "buries" insists that all hurry only hurries you
humanity creates God as God is said to have created humanity.
closer to death.
"Calling, good, God"—in other words, turning goodness itself
Looking at nature, in other words, doesn't give the speaker into a God who can be worshiped and loved—humanity treats
some peaceful sense that they're part of something bigger. its own best qualities as holy.
Rather, their melancholy makes them see the circle of life itself
People, in other words, are different from animals because they
as just a lot of pointless, doomed activity.
can both imagine and love the ideal of goodness.
Perhaps that accounts for the little change in the refr
refrain
ain this
This idea, unlike general thoughts of nature's loveliness, is
time around:
something the speaker can sink their teeth into. The refr
refrain
ain
"Away, melancholy" repeats three times across this stanza—but
With a he
heyy ho melancholy,
now, it's sometimes in parentheses, no longer the main course.
Away with it, let it go.
LINES 28-36
Here, the speaker isn't just throwing in a resigned "hey ho," but Speak not to ...
alluding to another poem: the F Fool's
ool's song at the end of ... let it go.
Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
Night. That song has its own refrain:
"With hey, ho, the wind and the rain." "For the rain it raineth The speaker is starting to get excited now, reflecting on the
every day," the Fool goes on: it's always like this. idea that there is something special, good, and valuable about
humanity: the fact that human beings are able to conceive of
This allusion suggests that the speaker might be trying to face specialness, goodness, and value! More astonishing yet, they
up to a world that feels empty. The "let it go" here could even love goodness so much that they call it God, believing it to be
hint that the speaker is trying to let go of being disappointed or the very creator of the universe, the biggest and most powerful
surprised that the world runs the way it runs, that human beings force there is. This idea is the first that's seemed at all effective
are just animals living out essentially meaningless lives. against the speaker's melancholy.
This, however, is not the end of the story. The speaker is old and wise enough, though, to know that their
LINES 18-27 melancholy will push back with a familiar counterargument. It's
all well and good that humanity likes goodness, the speaker's
Man of all ... melancholy side might respond—but look, the world is still full
... let it go. of suffering. So "Can God / Stone of man's thoughts, be good?"
The speaker has just been despairing that human beings are In other words, don't all the "tears" and "wars" in the world cast
animals among animals, creatures whose fate it is to this belief in goodness into doubt?
meaninglessly eat, reproduce, and die. But this idea contains The speaker rejects this line of questioning outright. Listen to
the seeds of its own undoing. In order for the speaker to be the triumphant flow of sounds as they turn doubt away:
melancholy about the idea that life is empty, they need to have
something that other animals don't: the capacity to imagine Speak not to me of tears
tears,
that life could have a meaning, the capacity to conceive of Tyranny, pox, wars
wars,
"meaning" at all.
The next stanza thus changes tack with an inspired suddenness. The assonance and alliter
alliteration
ation of "tear
tears" and "tyr
tyranny" and the

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slant rh
rhyme
yme of tears / wars give the speaker's voice a new music picture of a tormented man crying out to God also can't help
even as they list terrible things. but summon up images of the Crucifixion, an allusion that
The mere existence of evil and sorrow in the world, the speaker suggests that suffering, too, can be absorbed and transformed
goes on, can't undo what they've seen: by a faith in goodness.
Such faith is far from easy; the image of the poor battered
[...] it is enough figure "heav[ing] up" his eyes toward God makes it clear that
That the stuffed this is a feat of serious emotional strength. But that, the
Stone of man's good, growing, speaker concludes, is just what's astonishing about people. It's
By man's called God. precisely because the world can seem so empty, meaningless,
and cruel that the human capacity for belief should wash
In other words, people's enduring faith in goodness is a melancholy clear away. The speaker sums up their wonder in a
sufficient answer to doubt in itself. So long as people keep last slant-rh
slant-rhymed
ymed couplet :
believing that goodness is the ultimate power, the world isn't
utterly hopeless, and melancholy can't prevail. It is his virtue needs explai
aining
ing,
There's more to see in these words, too. Notice that the Not his faiailing
ing.
speaker sees the stone that represents God not just as
"stuffed" with human goodness, but "growing," expanding This is a direct rejoinder to the doubtful voice that would ask:
beyond human goodness. Part of what's so lovely about people, "Can God, / Stone of man's thoughts, be good?" It's no wonder,
then, is their ability not just to believe, but to imagine. the speaker says, that people are often cruel: this is a tough
Imagining God means imagining a goodness greater than any world, there's no mystery there. What melancholics need to
on earth, then putting one's faith in it. remember is that, in a world that's just as sad as they think it is,
humanity's persistent belief in the ideal of goodness is an out-
LINES 37-46 and-out miracle.
Man aspires ... LINES 47-48
... Not his failing.
Away, melancholy, ...
The last stanzas of the poem sum up everything the speaker ... let it go.
has seen about sorrow and goodness with a vivid object lesson
lesson.
It begins with a four-line stanza only seven words long, forming The poem closes with exactly the same words it started with,
a chiasmus
chiasmus: the old refr
refrain
ain:

Man aspires Away, melancholy,

To good
good, Away with it, let it go.
To lo
lovve
Sighs; By now, though, these words might sound a little different.
Melancholy, this poem suggests, might be agonizing, but it's
This "there and back again" structure introduces a new kind of also part of what's amazing and beautiful about human
cycle, a counter to the mindless, animalistic "hurry[ing]" the consciousness. (After all, who ever met a melancholy ant?) To
speaker sorrowed over earlier in the poem. Rather than just have the capacity to feel sad that the world can be meaningless
"eat[ing], coupl[ing]," and finally dying, people also just keep and cruel is also to have the capacity to imagine what meaning
trying to reach goodness, longing for love even when it feels and goodness would look like—and to believe in them, and to
distant. love them. This capacity is itself a miracle.
With this prologue, the speaker faces up to a sad, beautiful This last repetition
repetition, though, suggests that understanding all this
mystery. "Beaten, corrupted, dying," lying in pools of their "own doesn't make melancholy itself any easier to bear or to banish.
blood," humanity still: Even once the speaker has explored their new insight at poetic
length, they still need to say their magic words yet again; their
[...] heaves up an eye above melancholy isn't gone for good.
Cries, Love, love. And yet, in turning back to that refrain one more time, the
speaker is doing just what the poem describes: faithfully
The touching epizeuxis of "Love, love" here is an argument in reaching out toward goodness, love, and hope even from the
itself. Calling out for love not once but twice, the imagined depths of their pain. The mere existence of hope and faith, this
everyman reveals an unbreakable commitment to the idea of poem says, is reason enough to have hope and faith.
love, even when there's little love to be seen on earth. This

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POETIC DEVICES • Lines 16-17: “With a hey ho melancholy, / Away with it,
let it go.”
REFRAIN • Line 20: “(Away melancholy)”
The poem's poignant refr
refrain
ain shows the speaker grappling with • Line 23: “(Away melancholy)”
suffering and finding the courage to embrace life in a painful • Line 27: “Away melancholy, let it go.”
world. • Line 36: “Away, melancholy, let it go.”
• Lines 47-48: “Away, melancholy, / Away with it, let it go.”
The refrain first appears in the poem's two opening lines:

Away, melancholy, REPETITION

Away with it, let it go. Beyond the refr
refrain
ain that becomes the poem's backbone,
repetitions of various flavors give the poem both style and
Here, at the outset of the poem, readers get the sense that the substance, helping the speaker to develop a defense against
speaker is tired to death of being so "melancholy," but also that despair.
they might feel as if it's difficult to "let it go." To this speaker, it The par
parallelism
allelism and diacope of the second stanza introduce one
seems, melancholy might feel like both a burden and a crutch. traditional way of fighting back against one's melancholy:
Every time these words (or a variation on them) appear turning to nature for consolation. Listen to the repetitions
through the rest of the poem—and they do so in nearly every here:
stanza—their meaning evolves a little bit:
Are not the trees green
green,
• In the second stanza, for instance, the words "Away, The earth as green
green?
melancholy" appears after a series of comforting Does not the wind blow
blow,
ideas about how the beauties of the natural world Fire leap and the riv
rivers
ers flow
flow?
just keep rolling on regardless of one's feelings: the
"rivers flow" and "fire leaps" anyway. When these The diacope on "green" emphasizes that greenness, evoking a
lines conclude with an "Away, melancholy," it sounds lush, verdant landscape. Then, parallelism fills that landscape
as if the speaker is saying: Life goes on; therefore, go with life: the way the "wind blow[s]," "fire leap[s]," and the
away, melancholy. "rivers flow" helps the reader to remember that nature keeps
• But in the third stanza, the speaker has some on moving even when life feels frozen and bleak.
gloomier thoughts about natural cycles, reflecting
that "All things hurry / To be eaten or eat"—that it's a That thought alone, though, isn't enough to make the speaker
dog-eat-dog world for every living thing, in other feel better. On the contrary, it reminds them that, just as "thethe
words. When those thoughts conclude with an ant is busy
busy,," "all
all things hurry
hurry" to their inevitable deaths. (Notice
"Away, melancholy," it feels more as if the speaker is the corresponding parallelism in those lines!) Since nature can't
saying: Oh no, I've gone and made it worse—go away, give the speaker much solid meaning to hold onto, the speaker
melancholy! instead has to turn inward, thinking about what it is that makes
them want meaning at all.
As the poem goes on and the speaker begins to develop the As the speaker introduces the idea that humanity alone has the
idea that the human capacity even to imagine goodness might capacity both to imagine and to worship goodness, diacope
be cause for hope, the refrain starts to sound defiant, like a compresses a complex argument into three short lines. First,
battle cry. By the time the poem ends with exactly the same the speaker says, humanity raises up a "stone"—a sacred rock,
words it began with, the speaker has a real reason to let go of which might symbolically suggest anything from a standing
their melancholy: if nothing else, the speaker can find hope in stone to a cathedral. And then:
the idea that people believe in good even in the worst of times.
All those repetitions, though, might also suggest that hanging Into the stone, the god
on to such hope is no easy task. Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good
good, God
God.
Where Refr
Refrain
ain appears in the poem:
Consider how the logic flows here:
• Lines 1-2: “Away, melancholy, / Away with it, let it go.”
• Line 7: “Away melancholy.” • First, it's humanity who's the "god": a creator who
• Line 12: “Away, melancholy.” "pours what he knows of good" into that stone.
• Then, humanity calls its own vision of goodness God

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and worships it. always." For that matter, they invite a conclusion: "and I can take
comfort in that." If the speaker stopped there, they'd be doing
The repetitions here emphasize exactly what's so miraculous what plenty of poets before and since have done: finding hope
about humanity. In spite of life's cruelties, people both have an and relief in the idea that the world is a big, beautiful place,
idea of what goodness is and love it so much that it becomes much bigger than one one's
's sorrow
sorrow.
God. People, in other words, create the transcendent goodness On the other hand, presenting these ideas in the form of
they call God; that goodness is both part of them and an ideal questions also leaves another possible answer open: Yeah, trees
that they can aspire to and call upon. are green and rivers flow. So? Perhaps the thought of nature's
Dramatizing the consequences of this idea, the speaker uses a eternal beauty simply isn't enough, sometimes; perhaps it could
final repetition: even be depressing in its own way. When the speaker reflects a
few lines later that "All things hurry / To be eaten or eat," they
Beaten, corrupted, dying point out that nature's cycles aren't all about new leaves and
In his own blood lying sparkling waters. There are plenty of teeth and claws in the
Yet heaves up an eye above equation, too.
Cries, Love, lo
lovve. The rhetorical questions here thus both help the speaker reach
out to the beauty of the world and suggest that this might only
This moving moment of epizeuxis suggests—more than a single be so helpful. This speaker might take some consolation in the
cry of "love" would—that humanity can hang onto its belief in loveliness of nature, but they'll have to look to humanity to find
the goodness it calls God even in the most abysmal pain. lasting hope.

Where Repetition appears in the poem: Where Rhetorical Question appears in the poem:
• Line 3: “green” • Lines 3-6: “Are not the trees green, / The earth as green?
• Line 4: “green” / Does not the wind blow, / Fire leap and the rivers flow?”
• Line 5: “wind blow”
• Line 6: “Fire leap,” “rivers flow”
• Line 8: “The ant is busy”
ASYNDETON
• Line 10: “All things hurry” Asyndeton helps to evoke both the speaker's melancholic
• Line 24: “god” exhaustion and their gathering courage.
• Line 25: “good” When the sorrowing speaker reflects on the ways in which
• Line 26: “good, God.” humans are just another kind of animal, asyndeton suggests
• Line 30: “God” how gloomy the idea feels at first:
• Line 31: “good”
• Line 34: “man's,” “good” Man, too, hurries, ||
• Line 35: “man's,” “God” Eats, || couples, || buries,
• Line 38: “good”
• Line 44: “Love, love.” The absence of a conclusive "and" between "couples" and
"buries" here suggests that this cycle of life and death just
RHETORICAL QUESTION keeps going on—and not in a way that the speaker finds
A series of rhetorical questions in the second stanza helps the pleasant to contemplate. All that animalistic eating,
speaker to summon up some familiar old consolations for the reproducing, and dying could spin out forever, the speaker
melancholic soul—and to suggest that those consolations might fears, and it would never mean a thing.
not be all that consoling. The comparison between humanity and the animals ends up
Trying to banish their sorrow, the speaker asks: being oddly helpful, though, reminding the speaker that there is
a difference between people and animals: people can imagine
Are not the trees green, good and meaningful things even when they don't see any
The earth as green? evidence of them in the world. This truth in itself, the speaker
Does not the wind blow, feels, is "good"—so good that the asyndeton in this next list
Fire leap and the rivers flow? feels inspired, not sad:

These questions imply their own answers: "Why, yes, the natural Speak not to me of tears, ||
world is fresh and beautiful, and it does keep moving along as Tyranny, || pox, || wars,

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Here again, there's the sense that this not-quite-concluded list
of life's horrors could go on ad infinitum. In a new mood, though, • Line 24: “god”
the speaker is also prepared to say that it's because one could • Line 25: “good”
keep listing miseries forever that people should be astonished • Line 26: “good, God”
at their own capacity for goodness. The phrasing here even • Line 28: “tears”
par
parallels
allels the language above, suggesting that the speaker is • Line 29: “Tyranny”
seeing their earlier sorrow in a new light. • Line 30: “God”
• Line 31: “good”
Asyndeton then appears one last time in a new vision of the
• Lines 33-34: “stuffed / Stone”
human condition:
• Line 34: “good, growing”
• Line 35: “God”
Beaten, || corrupted, || dying ||
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above ||
ASSONANCE
Cries, Love, love. Assonance helps the poem to sound like what it is: a lament and
a rallying cry at once.
The absence of conjunctions here makes this image stark and Listen, for example, to the music of these lines, in which the
beautiful. Stripped down, these lines suggest just how speaker declares that humanity's ability to believe in goodness
miraculous is the human capacity to leap from misery to hope, is itself enough to banish melancholy:
pain to love.
Say rather it is enough
ough
Where Asyndeton appears in the poem: That the stuff
uffed
Sto
one of man's good, groowing,
• Lines 13-14: “hurries, / Eats, couples, buries,”
By man's called God.
• Lines 28-29: “tears, / Tyranny, pox, wars,”
• Lines 41-44: “Beaten, corrupted, dying / In his own
blood lying / Yet heaves up an eye above / Cries, Love, Here, assonance creates a surprising, slant end rhyme between
love.” "enough
ough" and "stuff
uffed" that emphasizes just how much
goodness humanity can cram into their idea of God. That idea
echoes in the /o/ assonance of "sto
one" and "groowing," which
ALLITERATION
suggests a miracle: a stone coming to life and growing even
Alliter
Alliteration
ation underscores a central idea in the poem: that beyond what humanity can imagine.
humanity's ability to first conceive of "good" and then worship
A similarly rich moment of assonance appears in the speaker's
it in the form of "God" is in itself reason enough to live and
last big declaration. Think for long enough about what
hope.
humankind has to go through, the speaker says, and there's
Observing that humanity calls "ggood, God," the speaker invites only one conclusion:
readers to notice that the connection between "good" and
"God" is right there in the sounds of the words—and not only in It is his virtue needs explai
aining,
the /g/ alliteration but the /d/ consonance
consonance. The only thing that Not his faiailing.
separates "good" and "God" is an O. Perhaps there's even a
subtle joke there: that extra "O" might be the "O" of pr
praise
aise that The assonance here supports a moving idea. To a person in the
transforms an abstract ideal of goodness into a figure to be depths of melancholy, the usual and obvious question is, "Why
worshiped. By crying "O!", in other words, people turn their is the world so awful, and why are people so awful?" Through
own "good" into their "God." this poem, the speaker learns to reply, "The real question is,
Elsewhere, alliteration plays its familiar role, giving the poem why are people so good?" The long /ay/ sound that links
emphasis and music. When the speaker says, "Speak not to me "explai
aining" and "fai
ailing" helps these brave words to hit even
of tears, / Tyranny, pox, wars," for instance, the hard /t/ sound harder.
suggests both the sharp pain of the world's many miseries and
the speaker's sharpening determination not to get bogged Where Assonance appears in the poem:
down in the thought of them.
• Line 3: “trees green”
• Line 4: “green”
Where Alliter
Alliteration
ation appears in the poem:
• Line 6: “leap”
• Line 6: “Fire,” “flow” • Line 8: “is busy”

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banishing sadness—a spell that, judging by the speaker's
• Line 11: “be eaten,” “eat” repetitions
repetitions, isn't as quick or as effective as one might hope.
• Line 15: “also”
• Line 16: “ho” METER
• Line 21: “He,” “creatures,” “alone” This poem is written in free vverse
erse, so it doesn't use a consistent
• Line 22: “stone” meter
meter. While no two stanzas use the same metrical patterns,
• Line 24: “stone” there's still plenty of powerful rhythm here.
• Line 25: “knows” For instance, listen to the strong beat in this summation of the
• Line 28: “tears”
eat-or-be-eaten world:
• Line 29: “Tyranny”
• Line 30: “God”
The ant is bus
busy
• Line 31: “thoughts”
He car
carrieth his meat
meat,
• Line 32: “enough”
All things hur
hurry
• Line 33: “stuffed”
To be eat
eaten or eat
eat.
• Line 34: “Stone,” “growing”
• Line 45: “explaining”
• Line 46: “failing” These lines, with their two stresses apiece, are in dimeter—a
thumping rhythm like a drumbeat or a pounding heart, just the
thing for a description of life's relentlessness.

VOCABULARY RHYME SCHEME

While there's no steady rh
rhyme
yme scheme here, the poem is full of
Melancholy (Line 1, Line 7, Line 12, Line 16, Line 20, Line 23,
rhyme: end rh
rhymes
ymes, internal rh
rhymes
ymes, slant rh
rhymes
ymes. All that
Line 27, Line 36, Line 47) - The "melancholy" the speaker sings
music reflects the melancholy speaker's effort to see the
of isn't any old sadness, but a deep, enduring, fundamental
beauty in an often sad and ugly world.
sorrow.
Listen, for instance, to the series of couplets in the poem's stark
Carrieth his meat (Line 9) - "Carrieth" is just an old-fashioned
ninth stanza:
word for "carries." The word "meat" here also means "food"
generally, not "flesh" specifically.
Beaten, corrupted, dying
Couples (Lines 13-14) - Has sex, procreates. In his own blood lying
Superlative (Lines 18-19) - The absolute best, above all others. Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
Pox (Lines 28-29) - Disease.
It is his virtue needs explaining,
Not his failing.
FORM, METER, & RHYME
The first four lines here are written in rhymed couplets: dying
FORM and lying, above and love. The last two lines are a couplet too, in
a sense, but their rhyme is slant: explaining and failing. This
"Away, Melancholy" is written in free vverse
erse, without meter
meter, a
movement from perfect to slant rhymes evokes the speaker's
predictable stanza length, or a regular rh
rhyme
yme scheme
scheme. The
wonder and pain at humanity's nigh-miraculous capacity to
short lines of its 10 irregular stanzas can sound weary, forceful,
keep believing in goodness: that last rhyme, breaking from
or full of hard-earned conviction. Moments of heightened,
perfection, sounds broken itself, like a sob.
biblical language ("He carrieth his meat," "He of all creatures
alone / Raiseth a stone") suggest that the speaker is delivering
great and solemn truths.
SPEAKER
Maybe the most distinctive formal choice here is the refr
refrain
ain
introduced in the first stanza: As the poem's title suggests, this speaker is a melancholic soul:
a person who suffers from deep sadness and sees the world
Away, melancholy, with an inspired, philosophical eye. (These qualities have long
Away with it, let it go. been thought to travel together.) Their constant refr
refrain
ain—
"Away, melancholy"—suggests just how weary they are of their
These words, sometimes slightly changed or recombined, sorrow and how ready they feel to "let it go."
reappear all through the poem. As the speaker returns and Perhaps, though, their melancholy has also given them gifts. It's
returns to the refrain, its words begin to sound like a spell for

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through being so very sad about the way the world works, the of public honor, though, is her anonymous afterlife in the
poem suggests, that people can also understand what makes English language. Some of her lines—"not waving but drowning"
human life special and miraculous: being sad about the world perhaps most notably—are so famous that they've floated free
means being able to imagine a higher "good," and even to of her work and become proverbial.
personify it as a loving "God."
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Though the speaker never says much about themselves
directly, then, the reader gets a clear picture of a person whose "Away, Melancholy" deals with universal concerns, but it's also
capacity for hope and despair aren't just equal, but intertwined. clearly autobiographical. Stevie Smith suffered from serious
depressions all her life; many of her poems deal with her
emotional struggles and the wisdom she found in them. Smith's
SETTING specific use of the word "melancholy" in this poem, in fact,
might point readers toward the history of the idea that sorrow,
The setting of "Away, Melancholy" is the whole sad and wisdom, and creativity travel together.
beautiful world. Trying hard to let their melancholy go, the Melancholy was once not just a mood, but a temperament. For
speaker casts an eye over everything there is, looking for centuries, people believed that the human body was governed
comfort in the fact that the "wind blow[s], / Fire leap[s] and the by four fluids: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile. These
rivers flow." The world might be full of "tyranny" and "wars," the fluids were supposed to stay in balance; when they didn't, the
speaker reflects, but it's also a place where people continue to theory ran, you ended up with all sorts of physical and
believe in goodness and love in spite of their pain. Taking this emotional ailments. People with an excess of black bile were
broad view, the speaker concludes that the best answer to said to be "melancholic": gloomy and despairing.
melancholy is to remember that continued human "virtue" in
the face of the world's constant and terrible pain is practically However, this temperamental imbalance came with its
miraculous. compensations. Melancholic illnesses were said to
disproportionately affect artists, philosophers, and other
creative types, and were sometimes even associated with
CONTEXT genius (though a serious fit of melancholy, as the great
engraver Albrecht Dürer knew, could feel more paralyzing than
LITERARY CONTEXT inspiring). In Renaissance Europe, melancholy even became
fashionable
fashionable.
Stevie Smith (1902-1971) was a British poet and novelist
whose art mingled the light and the dark. Many of her poems In linking a fit of melancholy with a creative vision of human
unite bleak subject matter with a breezy tone. Her most goodness, Smith thus draws on the old wisdom that sorrow can
famous poem, "Not Not W
Waaving But Drowning
Drowning," is a prime example inspire and educate, not just oppress.
(and gave its name to the 1957 book in which this poem was
first collected). "Away, Melancholy" itself is a quintessential
Smith poem, taking on the most desperate of questions in MORE RESOUR
RESOURCES
CES
deceptively simple language.
EXTERNAL RESOURCES
Readers might trace Smith's artistic lineage back to Victorian
poet Edward LLearear. Like Lear, Smith wrote and illustr
illustrated
ated • The PPoem
oem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
(https:/
(https:///youtu.be/RtdaUsh0xzU)
melancholy poetry in the guise of light verse; like Lear, Smith
suffered from persistent depressions. Both poets were odd • A Brief Biogr
Biograph
aphyy — Learn more about Stevie Smith's life
ducks, a little out of step with the world around them, and both and work at the Poetry Foundation.
found inspiration and sorrow in that oddity. Critic David Smith (https:/
(https://www
/www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/ste
.poetryfoundation.org/poets/stevie-smith)
vie-smith)
once remark
remarked ed that Smith's work was "so completely different
• Smith
Smith's
's Influence — Read an appreciation of Smith's poetry
from anyone else’s that it is all but impossible to discuss her
that praises her knack for "uneasy verse."
poems in relation to those of her contemporaries." By her own
(https:/
(https://www
/www.newy
.newyork
orker
er.com/books/page-turner/the-
.com/books/page-turner/the-
description, she was far more deeply influenced by Victorian
uneasy-v
uneasy-verse-of-ste
erse-of-stevie-smith)
vie-smith)
poets like Tenn
ennyson
yson and Robert Browning than by living
writers. • Smith on Melancholy — Listen to Smith discussing
It was only toward the end of her life that Smith's genius was how sadness and struggle inspired her poetry.
more widely recognized. By the time she died in 1971, she had (https:/
(https:///youtu.be/FKHWEWOrL9s)
been awarded both the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry and • Smith
Smith's
's LLegacy
egacy — Read a 2021 article honoring the 50th
the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. More telling than any kind anniversary of Smith's death.

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(https:/
(https://www
/www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/
.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/
mar/07/ste
mar/07/stevie-smith-poems-suit-a-pandemic)
vie-smith-poems-suit-a-pandemic) HOW T
TO
O CITE
LITCHARTS ON OTHER STEVIE SMITH POEMS
MLA
• Not W
Waaving but Drowning
Nelson, Kristin. "Away, Melancholy." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 7 Apr
2022. Web. 13 Apr 2022.

CHICAGO MANUAL
Nelson, Kristin. "Away, Melancholy." LitCharts LLC, April 7, 2022.
Retrieved April 13, 2022. https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/
stevie-smith/away-melancholy.

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