I love this poem, and I want to share it with you. It was written by W. H. Auden. It is like a song to me.
In Memory of W. B. Yeats |
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by W. H. Auden | ||
I
He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living. But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day.
II You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth. III Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry. In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate; Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye. Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise. |
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Thanks for the uplifting poem on this beautiful morning!
That IS a wonderful poem! Thanks!
Sent from my iPad
Auden knew the dangers of allowing “DATA” to take over decisions:
The Unknown Citizen
by W. H. Auden
(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)
He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a
saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn’t a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in a hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their
education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
Thanks for posting this poem. I’ve been thinking about it since the inBloom project was exposed.
Thank you, Diane. Ever the pathfinder for my spirit.
Thank you for this.
Diane and others:
Hope still springs eternal.
I’m a huge fan of this poem. It’s interesting to compare this version with the one that reads, “O all the instruments agree….” In the revised version, three stanzas are missing from the original section III.
Click to access Auden_InMemoryOfWBYeats.pdf
I’m glad he kept the stanza that mentions “Intellectual disgrace.” Like the rest of the poem it still rings true.
Love it! 🙂
I have long loved this poem. Thanks, Diane, for posting it!
Thank you Diane,
Here is my gift to you, although there will never be gifts that suffice for all that you do for our children, our teaching profession and our Democracy…
Song of Democracy ~ by Walt Whitman
An old man’s thoughts of school,
An old man’s gathering youthful memories and
blooms that youth itself cannot.
Now only do I know You,
O fair auroral skies – O morning dew upon the grass!
And these I see, these sparkling eyes,
These stores of mystic meaning, these young lives,
Building, equipping like a fleet of ships, immortal ships,
Soon to sail out over the measureless seas,
On the soul’s voyage.
Only a lot of boys and girls?
Only the tiresome spelling, writing, ciphering classes?
Only a public school?
Ah more, infinitely more.
And you America,
Cast you the real reckoning for your present?
The lights and shadows of your future, good or evil?
To girlhood, boyhood look, the teacher and the school.
Sail, Sail thy best, ship of Democracy,
Of value is thy freight, ’tis not the present only,
The Past is also stored in thee.
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone,
not of thy Western continent alone.
Earth’s resume entire floats on thy keel, O ship,
is steadied by thy spars,
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent
nations sink or swim with thee.
With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes,
epics, wars, thou bear’st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination –
port triumphant;
Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye
O helmsman, thou carriest great companions,
Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee,
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee.
All these poems rock! I don’t have time to type it, but in the same vein please check out Longfellow’s “The Arsenal at Springfield” to see how far we’re off the track these days.
This reminds me that I don’t read poetry anymore. Too much “informational text” in my diet.
I really love the enrichment, Diane! Last time, I was thinking that it would be really nice if you did it more often. Thanks so much for the gifts!
Thank you for sharing the Auden poem. It is good to be reminded, here “in the prison of (our) days,” how good a poet Auden was and is. I am reading most, if not all, of your prodigious emails, and believe me, it is hard to keep up. But I make the effort in order to understand the “intellectual disgrace” of our current times. (I write, by the way, not as a teacher but as a lawyer who exclusively represents teachers and teacher unions.) In the midst our “human unsuccess,” it is great to take a moment to relish the attainments of a great poem.
“Let the healing fountain start” indeed.
Ira Fader
I loved the poem. It was meaningful. Thanks for the post.