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Christopher BrownDr. Eileen GregoryLiterary Studies I: Lyric10 December 2007An Exhortation to the Reader of Poetry in W. H. Auden’s “In Memory of W. B. Yeats”In his poem, “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” Auden defines the reader of poetry as the poet’s successor, exhorting his readers to think and to act. Poets die, as every man dies, but poetry does not die, and neither does mankind. The title suggests that this poem is an elegy for acertain man; after the title, though, it mentions Yeats’ name once, and only a few other detailssuggest this is Yeats that Auden is mourning. The first section of the poem denigrates the body of the poet; the second section, the efficiency of poetry itself. Likewise, the poem as a whole doesnot seek to praise a particular poet or a specific author’s poetry. This poem is not exclusivelyfocused on Yeats, but inquires into poetry in general, poses Auden’s own ideas of poetry againstYeats’.Auden both admired and despised Yeats for different aspects of his poetry. Thisambivalence is visible in his admiration of Yeats’ poignancy and instantaneous effect, and in hiscontempt for Yeats’ delusions. The former, combined with the Auden’s solution to the latter,comprises the theme of the role of the poet in this poem. Auden contemporaneously wrote a short prose companion piece, “The Public vs. The Late William Butler Yeats,” in which he expressessome of his thoughts on Yeats—esteem from the defense and anti-fairytale sentiment from the prosecution. Auden concludes not with a condemnation or pardon for Yeats, but with putting the jury on trial, for seeking to judge the poet. The case lies not with the poet, but with his readers.Poetry (and consequently the poet) is only as effective as its listeners make it. If the listener readsthe poetry but does not digest it, then the poet has written his poetry in vain. As Auden calls theattentive reader of “Musée des Beaux Arts” to be mindful of suffering, he demands a certainsensitivity and active thought from readers in general.In “The Unknown Citizen,” Auden denounces the thoughtless individual who was born, breeds, and breathes his last on the bandwagon. This citizen is everything his leaders want him to be: a mindless lamb herded along with the flock, never questioning or “interfering” with their  plans (27). Auden never explicitly disparages this citizen, but the irony is apparent—the poem isan entreaty to think, not to act like this citizen. Auden never takes the role of authority; he never  presumes to preach exactly how man should live. Rather, he presents his poetry as “parables,” tomake the reader think about his way of life (“Psychology and Art To-day” 342).Two contextual themes that concerned Auden at the time he wrote “In Memory of W. B.Yeats” provide a useful background to its reading. First, Critic John Hildebilde lists fourteen biographical poems written 1936-41, most of them eulogies, which demonstrate Auden’s preoccupation with death (Hildebilde 1). Secondly, there is Auden’s disappointment with theeffectiveness of the individual, inspired by his involvement in the war, his travels, and fruitlessefforts to halt the germination of the Second World War. This disenchantment with poetry andconcern with death converge on the role of the poet and the best response from his listeners.The poem is a metrical gallery, beginning in free verse, moving to syllabic, andculminating in flawless trochaic tetrameter. Although there is a hint of the dirgeful dactylic, e.g.“The | dáy of his | déath was a | dárk cóld dáy” (6), the first part is free verse in order todownplay the death of the poet. As a classicist, Auden did not much care for free verse, but heknew its effects, and used it when fitting. Here, the variation and haphazard line lengths invoke asense of chaos and disorder. Likewise informally, the speaker is not an obsequious funeral orator,
 
Brown 2 but he is blunt and accepting of death, focusing not on what the dead man was, but where he isgoing. Similarly to “Musée des Beaux Arts,” Auden uses long lines to draw the focus away fromthe poet, as the world does, running on apathetically, as in “The brooks were frozen, the airportsalmost deserted” and “The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays” (2, 9).Contrastingly, the lines addressing the physicality of the poet seem curt and abrupt, such as “Far from his illness” (7) and the repeated “The day of his death was a dark cold day” (6, 31).This section is split into five five-to-six line stanzas (excluding the final two-linerepetition), progressing from the absolute unimportance of the poet to his inheritors—hisvicarious mode of immortality. Auden begins with an image of desolation, disparate from thedeath of the poet, from which the poet has disappeared. The world of unperturbed nature andunfeeling machinery has no regard for this death of just another man. But a glimmer of hoperemains: this man “disappeared,” rather than dying or passing away (1); he has departed from the physical world, but he has not been extinguished.The second stanza reinforces this sense, and explains where the departed has disappeared:“By mourning tongues / The death of the poet was kept from his poems” (10-11). Here Audenreveals the dichotomy between the poet and his poetry, and the one’s persistence even after itsseemingly inseparable maker has died. Here, Auden introduces his real subject, the mourners,and sets them forth as the poet’s salvation; or, more precisely, his eternal abode. Next, Auden takes one last look at the man’s life, and the moment of his death. Each linerings with sympathetic finality, reinforcing the finality of the body’s death. A catalog of sevenmostly equivalent phrases describes the desolation of the dying man, likening him to a city,which, bereft of its people, dies. The saving conclusion is again the dead man’s transference intohis listeners, not just “mourners” now, but “admirers” (10, 18).In the fourth stanza, we see the disembodied poet propagated into life in other cities nothimself and given to new readers. Two metaphors worth noting are these: the dead man is left“To find his happiness in another kind of wood,” that is, to live anew on paper. The second is astrange linking of the “words of the dead man” to the Eucharist (22). The Eucharist is broken andadministered to the people and consumed, just as the poet’s words are “scattered,” read, and“modified in the guts of the living” listeners (18, 23). The Eucharist is a sign of Christ’s sacrificefor his people, which feeds its partakers spiritually, and is likewise “modified” from bread into bodily sustenance. The words of the poet provide intellectual sustenance for his readers. Thedead man is not only incorporated into his readers’ reactions to his poetry, but he is subjected totheir “punish[ment],” that is, their individual interpretations, though incorrect in Yeats’conception (21). Even after death, the poet is not static, but made dynamic by his interpreters andeach one’s “foreign code of conscience” (21).Auden concludes this first section with great hope for what the poet’s readers
do
with the poetry. He sets a scene of thoughtlessness and delusion, where “brokers” have become “beasts,”the “poor” content themselves with “suffering,” and man lives in a fantasy of “freedom” (25-7).Into this wintry, inhumane environment, Auden introduces the few thousand readers in whom the poet lives on. These remember the day of Yeats’ death “As one thinks of a day when one didsomething slightly unusual” (29). Action is required on their part: the word is “did,” not
heard of 
(29).The second part of the poem is syllabic, which is a very unimposing meter, here mostlyregular, with an odd variation in the last half. Auden confronts Yeats in the second person, andrebuffs Yeats by describing where poetry comes from and what it does not do. This part, like thefirst, references Yeats personally, but soon diverges into a general interrogation of poetry. Yeats
 
Brown 3wrote poetry to cure his country, but his country remains sick. Auden claims “poetry makesnothing happen”; instead, it is merely a “way of happening, a mouth” (36, 41). This subtledistinction illumines the delicate opposition between Yeats and Auden. Yeats considered poetryto be a tool, whereas Auden proclaims it is nothing in itself, but only in how its readers respondto it. Yeats’ fault was that he expected too much, and the wrong things, out of poetry.Auden clarifies that poetry is not a force in itself, but is only as effective as a parable. The parable is what “survived” all of Yeats’ physicality and delusion. The problem that Yeats soughtto fix, the “madness” of Ireland, still exists (35). Despite his misdirected effort, Yeats’ poetryendures, indebted to his readers’ “foreign code of conscience” that keeps the poetry alive and pertinent (21). In his essay “Writing,” Auden claims the purpose of poetry is, “by telling thetruth, to disenchant and disintoxicate”—a much more humble goal than Yeats’ attempt to heal hiscountry of all its ills (27). Likewise, in “The Poet in the City,” Auden claims that the political poet can achieve nothing more than to enlighten the “management” of the plight of the“managed” (88).As Auden moves away from Yeats, he varies the line-length, creating a metrical col of “Would never want to tamper, flows on south,” by surrounding it with longer thirteen syllablelines (26). Shortening this line to ten syllables emphasizes the distance of poetry, which arises in“ranches of isolation,” from the unreflective bustle of the “executive” (37, 39). The valley, toAuden, was a place of true civilization. In “Atlantis,” the paradise of the title lies in a valley.This, Auden’s Eden, is not a bustling city, but a pastoral town. Meshing with the Yeats-as-citymetaphor from the first section, the poet’s mind is likened to a valley. Percy Bysshe Shellyclaimed that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Auden contradicts this withhis definition of poetry, which has nothing to do with “executives,” nor they with it (37). After this rejection of poetry’s material effect, the meter returns to the original twelve-syllable length,then descends finally into Auden’s short concluding definition of poetry as “A way of happening,a mouth” (41). The caesura before “a mouth” is strong enough that those two final words readalmost as another line—a split that further subdues and quiets the ending into a sigh.The third section is comprised of six stanzas of truncated trochaic tetrameter that beg to be juxtaposed with Yeats’ autobiographical elegy, “Under Ben Bulben,” which is metricallysimilar, though intriguingly more erratic. Yeats, in his epitaph, laments his own death, fearing for the future of Irish poetry, calling for new poets to arise and replace him when he is gone. Audenuses “In Memory of W. B. Yeats,” to set forth his contrasting idea: that the worth of poetry is notin its author, but in its readers. Auden does not satirize Yeats’ meter with his own stringenttetrameter, but molds it to fit his own texture and meaning. Yeats’ diction befits his relaxedmeter, but Auden uses a strict pattern to respond to Yeats’ overreaching efforts and to institute adifferent order.The speaker here assumes a more serious demeanor. With gravity, he finally names theman whose death he elegizes: “Earth, receive an honored guest / William Yeats is laid to rest”(42-3). But this is no more befitting a funeral oration than the previous sections; Yeats is demotedto the importance of a “vessel”; now emptied, he is finished (44). Through these solemn elegiaccouplets, Auden departs from the poet to the fearful landscape of Europe, then returns to the poetto implore him for words of hope in the midst of distress.The first stanza initially seems disconnected the following stanzas, partly because Audendeleted the three stanzas that originally followed from the final version of the poem. That hedeleted these is not incredibly surprising; they make the same kind of universal claims thatinduced him to remove the entire “September 1, 1939” from his collected works. The claims that
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