“The wind of their endurance, driving south Flattened your words against your speaking mouth.”

“The wind of their endurance, driving south Flattened your words against your speaking mouth.”

The last lines of, Hearing Your Words and Not a Word Among Them, by Edna St. Vincent Millay details the final sounds and senses of the day, and how as these abstract noises in Matinicus escalate, so do the sounds of spoken words. The lines, “The wind of their endurance, driving south Flattened your words against your speaking mouth”, introduces a final connection between the shapes of sound, wind, and words, and how all these forms of communication, connection, and clamor are interconnected. Millay evinces this interaction between the sound of thought and voice to the noise of direction and distance through a rhyme scheme. This scheme is most visible in the last few end lines, “Fourth” and “North” as well as “South” and “Mouth”. The choice of creating a rhythmic scheme with the last words of each line, is that these corresponding end words are different in their form and subject but similar in their production of noise. For instance, “South” and “Mouth” are two distinct and abstract concepts, yet they are similar to one another in how they both create sound. Sound is produced by the wind and distance of the “South”, while noise and voice is created through the “Mouth”, making these two individual concepts interconnected in the fact that they both create motions of sound and thought.

 Millay chooses to find a connection between two opposing articles, in order to prove the idea that all of these sounds of winds, whistles, and doors may have a louder cry than diction, but it doesn’t eliminate the valor or value of our thoughts and words. Millay creates the concept that our words are more powerful than any force of nature, direction, or space, in order for her own literary voice to dominate the poem and its speech.