Away Melancholy.pdf - Florence Margaret Smith known as...

Florence Margaret Smith, known as Stevie Smith (20 September 1902 – 7 March 1971), was
an English poet and novelist. She won the Cholmondeley Award and was awarded
the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. A play, Stevie by Hugh Whitemore, based on her life,
was adapted into a film starring Glenda Jackson. When Smith was five, she developed
tuberculous peritonitis and was sent to a sanatorium near Broadstairs, Kent, where she
remained for three years. She related that her preoccupation with death began when she
was seven, at a time when she was very distressed at being sent away from her mother.
Death and fear fascinated her and provide the subjects of many of her poems. Her mother
died when Smith was 16.
When suffering from the depression to which she was subject all her life, Smith was so
consoled by the thought of death as a release that, as she put it, she did not have to commit
suicide. She wrote in several poems that death was "the only god who must come when he
is called". Smith suffered throughout her life from an acute nervousness, described as a mix
of shyness and intense sensitivity.
Summary
‘Away, Melancholy’ by Stevie Smith is an uplifting poem that seeks to banish melancholy
from the minds of its readers.
The poem takes the reader through the basic reasons why the speaker believes there’s no
reason to feel 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.
Themes
In ‘Away, Melancholy,’ the poet explores the prominent theme of nature. This includes
human nature/instinct and non-human nature. Throughout natural images, the poet sets
the poem up to remind the reader of the basic beauty of the living world. She 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? In an
effort to connect the natural elements like wind, rain, and fire to the human experience, the
poet brings in God, human decency, and strength. She ends the poem on a poignant note,