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W.H.AUDEN. SELECTED POEMS. (from a preface by J. D. McClatchy). The Wanderer. O Where Are You Going?. Hunting Fathers. On This Island
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W. H. AUDEN. SELECTED POEMS
In certain poems the audio version differs from the published text.
W. H. AUDEN
(from a preface by J. D. McClatchy)
When he arrived at Oxford as an undergraduate, W. H. Auden went to see his tutor in literature, who asked the young man what he meant to do in later life. " I am going to be a poet, " Auden answered. " Ah, yes, " replied the tutor, and began a small lecture on verse exercises improving one's prose. Auden scowled. " You don't understand at all, " he interrupted. " I mean a great poet. "
The Wanderer
Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle.
Upon what man it fall
In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing,
Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face,
That he should leave his house,
No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women;
But ever that man goes
Through place-keepers, through forest trees,
A stranger to strangers over undried sea,
Houses for fishes, suffocating water,
Or lonely on fell as chat,
By pot-holed becks
A bird stone-haunting, an unquiet bird.
There head falls forward, fatigued at evening,
And dreams of home,
Waving from window, spread of welcome,
Kissing of wife under single sheet;
But waking sees
Bird-flocks nameless to him, through doorway voices
Of new men making another love.
Save him from hostile capture,
From sudden tiger's leap at corner;
Protect his house,
His anxious house where days are counted
From thunderbolt protect,
From gradual ruin spreading like a stain;
Converting number from vague to certain,
Bring joy, bring day of his returning,
Lucky with day approaching, with leaning dawn.
O Where Are You Going?
" O where are you going? " said reader to rider,
" That valley is fatal where furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return. "
" O do you imagine, " said fearer to farer,
" That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking,
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass? "
" O what was that bird, " said horror to hearer,
" Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease. "
" Out of this house" -said rider to reader,
" Yours never will" -said farer to fearer
" They're looking for you" -said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
Hunting Fathers
Our hunting fathers told the story
Of the sadness of the creatures,
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Pitied the limits and the lack
Set in their finished features;
Saw in the lion's intolerant look,
Behind the quarry's dying glare,
Love raging for, the personal glory
That reason's gift would add,
The liberal appetite and power,
The rightness of a god.
Who, nurtured in that fine tradition,
Predicted the result,
Guessed Love by nature suited to
The intricate ways of guilt,
That human ligaments could so
His southern gestures modify
And make it his mature ambition
To think no thought but ours,
To hunger, work illegally,
And be anonymous?
On This Island
Look, stranger, on this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.
Here at a small field's ending pause
Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges
Oppose the pluck
And knock of the tide,
And the shingle scrambles after the suck —
— ing surf, and a gull lodges
A moment on its sheer side.
Far off like floating seeds the ships
Diverge on urgent voluntary errands,
And this full view
Indeed may enter
And move in memory as now these clouds do,
That pass the harbour mirror
And all the summer through the water saunter.
" As I Walked Out One Evening"
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
Were fields of harvest wheat.
And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
" Love has no ending.
" I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street,
" I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky.
" The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world. "
But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
" O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
" In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.
" In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day.
" Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
" O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've missed.
" The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.
" Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.
" O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
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Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
" O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked nelghbour
With your crooked heart. "
It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
And the deep river ran on.
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