Sad moods...
Away, melancholy
by Stevie Smith
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Are not the trees green,
The earth as green?
Does not the wind blow,
Fire leap and the rivers flow?
Away melancholy.
The ant is busy
He carrieth his meat,
All things hurry
To be eaten or eat.
Away, melancholy.
Man, too, hurries,
Eats, couples, buries,
He is an animal also
With a hey ho melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Man of all creatures
Is superlative
(Away melancholy)
He of all creatures alone
Raiseth a stone
(Away melancholy)
Into the stone, the god
Pours what he knows of good
Calling, good, God.
Away melancholy, let it go.
Speak not to me of tears,
Tyranny, pox, wars,
Saying, Can God
Stone of man’s thoughts, be good?
Say rather it is enough
That the stuffed
Stone of man’s good, growing,
By man’s called God.
Away, melancholy, let it go.
Man aspires
To good,
To love
Sighs;
Beaten, corrupted, dying
In his own blood lying
Yet heaves up an eye above
Cries, Love, love.
It is his virtue needs explaining,
Not his failing.
Away, melancholy,
Away with it, let it go.
Liza says - I like the spirit of this poem: that you can tell melancholy, or a sad mood, to just go away and leave you alone. It helped me to ward off the moods that would hit me as surely as heavy weather in my late teens and early twenties. Stevie Smith’s big red book of Collected Poems were a near constant companion when I was a student in Oxford. Like many undergraduates I was anxious, trying to live up to my own and other’s expectations and falling short. I often found myself in seeming dead end moods of sadness which could feel entrapping. Stevie Smith’s voice was a great comfort. Many of her poems turned into inner refrains that kept me going and continue to cheer me. Her wit and her seriousness combine with a playfulness that is not naive.