E. E. Cummings

Where's Madge Then

Where's Madge Then - meaning Summary

Absence and Fragile Mortality

The poem contemplates absence and the inevitability of decay. The speaker asks where Madge is, imagines burial and nature’s silence, and contrasts transient beauty with time and worms. A flower cannot account for a person’s worth, and rain offers no answer. The final lines register a personal, resigned loss: the speaker states his own heart fell dead before, suggesting emotional death or grief preceding any explanation.

Read Complete Analyses

Where's Madge then, Madge and her men? buried with Alice in her hair, (but if you ask the rain he'll not tell where.) beauty makes terms with time and his worms, when loveliness says sweetly Yes to wind and cold; and how much earth is Madge worth? Inquire of the flower that sways in the autumn she will never guess. but i know my heart fell dead before.

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