"God's World" by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Antonio Giulio Cavallo III B  

Fulbright E.T.A Program

National Poetry Month Project

May 12, 2011

The continuous human desire to understand transcendental Nature is expressed in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “God’s World.” In this poem, the poetess expresses the desire to understand what the main force that rules natural elements. She doesn’t understand why she couldn’t enjoy Nature’s essential meaning. Through the poem she prays to God to render divine wonders closer to the human state of mind. The poetess doesn’t sketch a specific Persona in the poem. On the contrary, she uses a language that expresses her will to join Nature’s magnitude. Therefore, the Persona can be identified with the poetess. At the beginning of the poem the Persona is already voicing her sense of inferiority before this wonder. In line one she writes the word “world” in capital letters to give to the reader an idea of her bewilderment. With this feeling she needs to talk to Nature, which she is listening to and observing. The opening line is the reflection’s final step. It explains something that she has already thought. This sensation results in a prayer to find finally some answers to her questions. These questions are turned to something that is transcendental and unknowable.

The two stanzas presents rhyming couplets except for the opening verses “O WORLD….enough!” and “Long have I know a glory in it all!” (1,8). In fact, at the beginning she describes her sense of incompleteness (“O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough!”); then, in line eight she thinks about the natural world’s magnitude which  she already knows but from which she feels left out. In the following verses she talks to Nature, personifying it; this is evident through the repetition of “thy”: “Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!/Thy mists that roll and rise /Thy woods…”  In this way she enumerates the natural elements and shows her sense of inferiority in front of something superior.

 Notwithstanding her discussion of Nature, she is conscious that behind the natural movement there is a divine, powerful force that is God. In fact, the poetess uses several times the possessive adjective “thy,” which is not only the poetic “your” but also used in the Bible to refer to God.  In the initial verses the reader finds a sort of dialogue between the Persona and Nature but then in the subsequent verses it is clear that the receiver of this prayer is God.

 Edna St. Vincent Millay reveals her pantheistic vision in which God is omnipresent. She is immersed in Nature and she studies natural phenomena like “winds, wide grey skies/…mists…/woods../ gauntcrag.” She thinks that all this espresses melancholy. It hides something wonderful and divine, maybe unknowable to humans. In line seven she calls twice “world”,  repeating the initial sentence. With this repetition she wants to create a pause. Because after she expresses this reflection it seems that she speaks in a loud voice. It means that she feels greater deep sorrow for this new consciousness. Then she continues explaining that all this Nature puts her aside and doesn’t allow further comprehension. In fact, she uses a paradox to explain how this thing that everyone admires can cause pain and sadness. With a consecutive clause in verse 10 “here such a passion is /As stretcheth me apart” she describes a passion that doesn’t invade the heart and the soul but goes away from them. The poetess feels totally immersed in a purer beauty, which includes the divine presence in the Nature so closer to humanity. But humanity will not get the deep meaning; it can only take the sensitive essential being. In fact in verse 11 she turns to the supreme divinity that rules all this wonder: God.

 She directs her prayer to God; this is clear from the last verse’s “prithee.” She feels that her soul is totally immersed in everything surrounding her. This is plain in the verse “my soul is all but out of me”. She feels part of the world beauty but her human condition prevents her from going beyond the tangible world because beyond this there’s only God. She feels like a prisoner of a passion that she can’t possess totally. This symbolizes the line that divides humanity and trascendental. And not even the most sensitive soul could go beyond. Thus, she prays to God to collect herself from this passionate sadness. And she asks him to end the manifestation of natural beauty.  She wants her sensibility to not be prisoner of her sensations because she is conscious of  being unable to hear it.

From a syntactical point of view the poem presents short sentences. There are some exclamations such as in the first stanza. Some enjambements connect the verses and give the poem a quick rhythm. The main meaning of this poem is the reflection of Edna Millay’s view of Nature. She thinks that Nature is the greatest manifestation of beauty; the natural element is frequent in her poems. In conclusion, this poem describes human feeling through the observation of Nature. The human sense of inferiority before divinity is justified by the fact that all people try to understand the deeper meaning of everything. And this desire for knowledge is always frustrated by the line that divides us from the unknowable.