Euclid Poems


It was a beautiful yet confusing poem for me at first as part of the poem uses biblical allusions such as "O Holy". It wasn't until I dug deeper into the history of Euclid to understand where this background and purpose of the biblical ties came from. 

As mentioned in the title of the poem: Euclid or otherwise known and Euclid of Alexandria was a Greek mathemetician that was given the title: The Father of Geometry. Many of his geometric theories stemmed from a series of axioms. This implied that, given an assumption that a statement is true, it is a starting point for exploration and rational thinking. I believe that this poem written by Edna St. Vincent Millay truly captivated the nature of geometry that Euclid was known for by adopting the use of an iambic pentameter structure with the occasional "strategically placed occurrences of dactylic meter, which successfully slow down the poem where new ideas begin or old ones end." (McGee, n.d.). This musical meter is also another mathematical property to this poem and the meaning behind it. 

This ties well into the deeper meaning of the poem which means to say that beauty isn't only seen on the outside but your inner beauty is more important. Adding on to this point, the poem might infer that there is beauty within simplicity. I got this idea from how Euclid was able to teach the different theories derived from axioms in simplistic and easy to follow ways such as the Poftulate 1 through 4 where diagrams were mainly used to pass on knowledge. Overall, when Euclid was trying to expand his ideas, the voice through the poem suggests that the process of understanding geometry may be difficult at first however, there is beauty and success when really understood.


McGee, R. (n.d.). A Mathematical Jesus: An Explication of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare”. Retrieved from https://lifeorange.com/writing/writing2.htm#:~:text=For%20the%20most%20part%2C%20the,begin%20or%20old%20ones%20end

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