Childhood Is The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

I don't know why people insist on centering text, but they do so to this poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay making it seem trite and kid-like. While it may be about childhood, it is definitely not kid-like and it is extremely non-trite.

I first found this poem years ago and as I read it I was in awe because yes, that's pretty much it. While I've not had anyone but my grandparents pass away, I remember getting the gravity of the situation when my close friend lost her mother. I remember how my grandparents' deaths affected my parents and it's true, I think, that a new chapter of a person's life begins at that point.

I do love this poem for its wisdom and for the emotionality it has. I cannot help but get a little choked up at the line "But you do not wake up a month from then, two months/A year from then, two years, in the middle of the night/And weep, with your knuckles in your mouth, and say Oh, God!/Oh, God!"

I think the poem loses its sharpness and bite from stanza four to the end. They are still valid and all, I just think they lack the greatness of the start of the poem. I wish the first three stanzas were a separate poem. Or perhaps, the latter stanzas indicate the arrival to adulthood. The last stanza just sounds so adult. It's not expansive anymore. Just short, declarative sentences. It's a tight, little block. It's totally dry-eyed. "And [then N will] leave the house." This poem mirrors this biblical passage in that way: "When I was a child, I spake as a child...but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

Favorite line: "Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies./Nobody that matters, that is."