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In Memory of W. B. Yeats
W. H. Auden - 1907-1973

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. W. H. Auden was admired for his
What instruments we have agree unsurpassed technical virtuosity and
ability to write poems in nearly every
The day of his death was a dark cold day. imaginable verse form; his
incorporation of popular culture,
Far from his illness current events, and vernacular
speech in his work; and also for the
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, vast range of his intellect, which drew
easily from an extraordinary variety
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
of literatures, art forms, social and
By mourning tongues political theories, and scientific and
technical information.
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
Themes
But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours; loss
The provinces of his body revolted, memories
The squares of his mind were empty, mourning

Silence invaded the suburbs,

The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. About W. H. Auden >

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities

And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, sign up for poem-a-day
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
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And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man john@example.com Sign Up
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.

From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1940 W. H. Auden,
 renewed by the Estate of W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.

More by W. H. Auden
In Memory of Sigmund On the Circuit Friday's Child (audio
Freud only)
Among pelagian travelers,
When there are so many we Lost on their lewd  
shall have to mourn, conceited way
Click the icon above to
when grief has been made To Massachusetts,
listen to this audio poem.
so public, and exposed
W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden 1965 W. H. Auden

1940 1964

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