Poem: "maggie and milly and molly and may"

maggie and milly and molly and may by e.e cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles, and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles: and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
It’s always ourselves we find in the sea



I believe the four girls refer to only one person and that the trip to the beach symbolizes different life experiences from childhood to adulthood, either pleasant or not. The sea is a metaphor for life. Each girl experienced the beach in very distinctive ways, which represent the ways in which we go through different moments in our lives, how we experience them and how we feel about them. Similarly, we discover something new and challenging every day, no matter how bad or good that would be.

The message the writer wants to convey is that if we are lost in life we should reflect upon our experiences in order to have a picture of who we are. The last two lines constitute a violation of syntactic contiguity, realized by change of tense (from past simple to present simple) and voice. The voice is 3rd person except in the last two lines, in which the writer speaks. While the first part of the poem is quite childish, in the last stanza the writer’s attitude becomes serious and he makes us reflect upon the impact of life experiences on us.