What is the author trying to say?
Edna St. Vincent Millay is saying that people who have wonderful abilities and full of unshown potentials have always, and will always, die gently and quietly. Nobody is an exception and while death will never stop his duties, she is not happy with it and "does not approve" of it.
Linguistic: Millay begins this poem by contrasting the warmth of human love with the hardness of the earth, the “shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground”. This demonstrates that both two figures warmth and hardness does not harmonize together and shouldn’t be forced to be a team, but it happens regardless. Millay uses flowers, such as lilies, laurel and roses to represent a funeral. She uses imagery that appeals to the sense of smell. For example the phrase “Fragrant is the blossom” evokes the floral smell often present in funeral homes. Imagery that appeals to visual is also present in this poem the “darkness of the grave” paints a gloomy portrait and the attempt to balance it out the gloominess with flowers like “roses” and “lilies.” The juxtaposition of flowers and dirt illustrates the reality of life. Flowers are full of beauty and life, but one day it will rot and join alongside with dirt, a figure of death. The beauty of a flower symbolizes a human’s expressive qualities, laughter, affection, love, honest look, bravery and intelligence. Millay portrays that while the person's body still exists, their qualities are gone, or as she puts it, "but the best is lost". While we can stare at a person's dead, decaying beauty, we can no longer communicate with them, and that is what she truly wants.
Semantic: Millay’s word choices revealed a funeral-like tone to the poem. Her use of repetition and “dark” word choices give the impression of gloom, sorrow and burial. Using somber words like “hard ground”, “darkness”, “dust”, and “grave”, Millay expresses despair and sorrow. Her use of the words “gently” and “quietly” speak to the still, hushed atmosphere at a funeral and of a body after the spirit is gone. Despite the gloomy like tone, Millay uses a tone of joy by presenting images such as “the wise and the lovely. With lilies and with laurel,” this suggests a certain beauty and elegance about death.
Structural Patterns: Millay’s poem is structured with long lines, rhyming quatrains, and structured with two longer verses alternating with two shorter verses. The rhyme scheme and the structure of the poem give the impression of a song, with a “chorus” between each verse. This structural pattern correlates with title “dirge” which means a song composed as a memorial to a dead person. Millay uses repetition throughout this poem. In the first line of the fourth verse, she repeats the words “down, down, down”. She uses repetition to create a sense of digging, as in a burial. Several of words were followed by commas to signify that there are brief pauses between them. For example “Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind; Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.” The brief pauses are mimicking the motion of slowly digging deeper and deeper into the earth.
The phrases, “I am not resigned” and “I do not approve” are also repeated throughout the poem to create a great effect. This repetition really emphasizes the authors’ disapproval of the fact that death comes to all no matter what they did in life. These phrases contribute to the feeling of despair, and since the poem begins and ends with “I am not resigned”, we realize that there is no revelation or comforting conclusion to this poem, just an observation about the reality of life and death.
In conclusion:
In “Dirge Without Music”, Millay laments that there is no continuity of the spiritual or intellectual after death, only the physical in the form of “feed the roses”. This poem seems to be a commentary on the futile and temporary nature of life, with the realization that whether or not we approve or are resigned, death is a reality of life.
