Human Wrongs Watch
By John Scales Avery*
John Scales Avery, author of this book: We Need Their Voices Today! has generously granted Human Wrongs Watch permission to publish it in a series of chapters. This is Chapter 18: Edna St. Vincent Millay. The others will follow successively.

Figure 18.1: The American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, (public domain).
The beautiful red-haired American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), is known for her lyric poetry, but she also wrote some of the finest sonnets in the English language, combining classic form with modern imagery.
Many of these sonnets are based on the emotions that she experienced in her love affairs with both men and women.
However, my own favorite is a serious sequence of eighteen sonnets, “Epitaph for the Race of Man”, published in 1934, just as the catastrophe of World War II was about to engulf our planet.
The basic premise of Millay’s “Epitaph” is that we know from the evolutionary history of life on earth, that no species survives forever.
She speculates on what will be the final cause of the extinction of the human race, and concludes that Man will die by his own hand, since none the innumerable disasters that nature has thrown at us over the millennia has persuaded humankind “to lay aside the lever and the spade, and be as dust among the dusts that blow”. Here are a few of the sonnets from the sequence:
“Oh Earth, unhappy planet, born to die,
Might I your scribe and your confessor be,
What wonders must you not relate to me
Of Man, who, when his destiny was high
Strode like the sun into the middle sky
And shone an hour, and who so bright as he,
And like the sun went down into the sea,
Leaving no spark to be remembered by.
But no; you have not learned in all these years
To tell the leopard and the newt apart;
Man, with his singular laughter, his droll tears,
His engines and his conscience and his art,
Made but a simple sound upon your ears:
The patient beating of an animal heart.”
“Alas for Man, so stealthily betrayed,
Bearing the bad cell in him from the start,
Pumping and feeding on his healthy heart
That wild disorder never to be stayed
When once established, destined to invade
With angry hordes the true and proper part,
‘Til Reason joggles in the headsman’s cart.
And Mania spits from every balustrade.
Would he had searched his closet for his bane,
Where lurked the trusted ancient of his soul,
Obsequious Greed, and seen that visage plain;
Would he had whittled treason from his side
In his stout youth and bled his body whole,
Then had he died a king, or never died.”
“Here lies, and none to mourn him but the sea,
That falls incessant on the empty shore,
Most various Man, cut down to spring no more;
Before his prime, even in his infancy
Cut down, and all the clamour that was he,
Silenced; and all the riveted pride he wore,
A rusted iron column whose tall core
The rains have tunneled like an aspen tree.
Man, doughty Man, what power has brought you low,
That heaven itself in arms could not persuade
To lay aside the lever and the spade
And be as dust among the dusts that blow?
Whence, whence the broadside? Whose the heavy blade?…
Strive not to speak, poor scattered mouth; I know.”
It seems to me that although Millay’s words were extremely appropriate as a warning to humankind in 1934, they are even more heavy with meaning today, when we are threatened with the disaster of thermonuclear war as well as catastrophic climate change, both self-inflicted.
The cancer-like root of the problem is “obsequious Greed”. Please read the whole sonnet sequence yourself. Millay speaks eloquently to us over the years:
Edna St. Vincent Millay, eloquent poet with a deepconcern for the future of humsnity, we need your voice today!
——-
Read Previous Chapters:
Introduction: We Need Their Voices Today! Compassion and Greed: Two Sides of Human Nature
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (1) Saint Francis of Assisi
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (2) Thomas Paine
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (3) Thomas Jefferson
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (4) Mary Wollstonecraft
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (5) William Godwin
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (7) The Marquis de Condorcet
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 8: Thomas Robert Malthus
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 9: Percy Bysshe Shelley
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 10: Robert Owen
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 11: John Stuart Mill
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 12: Henry David Thoreau
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 13: Count Leo Tolstoy
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 14: Mahatma Gandhi
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 15: Martin Luther King Jr
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 16: Wilfred Owen
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 17: Albert Einstein
——-
*AUTHOR: John Scales Avery, Ph.D., who was part of a group that shared the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize for their work in organizing the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network and Associate Professor Emeritus at the H.C. Ørsted Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
He is chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy and received his training in theoretical physics and theoretical chemistry at M.I.T., the University of Chicago and the University of London.
He is the author of numerous books and articles both on scientific topics and on broader social questions. His most recent books are Information Theory and Evolution and Civilization’s Crisis in the 21st Century (pdf).
Read more John Scales Avery’s articles published in Human Wrongs Watch:
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 17: Albert Einstein
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 16: Wilfred Owen
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 15: Martin Luther King Jr
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 14: Mahatma Gandhi
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 13: Count Leo Tolstoy
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 12: Henry David Thoreau
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 11: John Stuart Mill
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 10: Robert Owen
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 9: Percy Bysshe Shelley
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter 8: Thomas Robert Malthus
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (7) The Marquis de Condorcet
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (5) William Godwin
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (4) Mary Wollstonecraft
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (3) Thomas Jefferson
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (2) Thomas Paine
We Need Their Voices Today! Chapter (1) Saint Francis of Assisi
We Need Their Voices Today! Compassion and Greed: Two Sides of Human Nature
Interview with John Scales Avery, One of the Greatest Living Intellectuals on Earth
We Must Not Demonize and Threaten Russia
Tribalism, Nationalism and Fascism
Europe Must Not Be a Vassal to Trump’s USA
Trump Threatens the World with Climate Disaster
Gorbachev Appeals for Sanity, Dialogue
What U.S. Progressives Should Do on November 8
Human Nature: An Evolutionary Paradox
Mainstream Media Are Betraying Humanity
US Elections Cry Out for Reform!
NATO Threatens Europe With Annihilation
The Danger of Fascism in the United States
John Scales Avery – Collected Essays
Culture, Education and Human Solidarity
The United States Drifts Towards Political Irresponsibilty
Paris and the Long-Term Future
We Must Stop the Madness of Brinkmanship
Paris: A Sense of Proportions Is Urgently Needed
Book Review: Aurelio Peccei and Daisako Ikeda, “Before It Is Too Late”
The Need for a New Economic System – PART IX: a New Society, a New Social Contract, a New Way Life
The Need for a New Economic System – PART VIII: The Cooperative Movement
The Need for a New Economic System – PART VII: The Global Food Crisis
The Need for a New Economic System – PART VI: Adverse Effects of Globalization
The Need for a New Economic System – PART V: The Threats and Costs of War
The Need for a New Economic System – PART IV: Neocolonialism and Resource Wars
The Need for a New Economic System – PART II: Entropy and Economics
The Need for a New Economic System – PART I : Limits to Growth
Israel, Iran and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
Will the Real Issues Be Discussed in 2016?
New Hope for Avoiding Catastrophic Climate Change
Albert Einstein, Scientist and Pacifist
“The Path to Zero: Dialogues on Nuclear Dangers”, by Richard Falk and David Krieger
Millay’s “Epitaph for the Race of Man”
The Future of International Law (Part I)
The Future of International Law (Part II)
The Future of International Law (Part III)
Europe Must Not Be Forced Into a Nuclear War with Russia
Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Europe – The Dangers Are Very Great Today
Why Is the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons So Urgent?
Why Is the Military-Industrial Complex Sometimes Called “The Devil’s Dynamo”?
Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand Is at Our Throats
Does It Make Sense to Saw Off the Branch on Which You Are Sitting?
Blood for Oil – The Close Relationship Between Petroleum and War
2017 Human Wrongs Watch
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