W.H. Auden

The Penguin Poets

Penguin books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, EnglandPenguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Austialia

This selection first published 1958Reprinted 1962, 1964, 1966 (twice)

Copyright W.H. Auden, 1958

Made and printed in Great Britainby Cox & Wyman Ltd, London, Fakenham and ReadingSet in Baskerville

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, fired out, or other-wise circulated with the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Contents

The Fall of Rome 1Lullaby 2

The Journey 3The Letter 4This One 5

6 This Lunar Beauty7 Taller To-Day8 The Decoys9 Madrigal

The piers are pummelled by the waves;In a lonely field the rainLashes an abandoned train;Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;Agents of the Fisc pursueAbsconding tax-defaulters throughThe sewers of provincial towns.

Private rites of magic sendThe temple prostitutes to sleep;All the literati keepAn imaginary friend.

Cerebrotonic Cato mayExtol the Ancient Disciplines,But the muscle-bound MarinesMutiny for food and pay.

Caesar’s double-bed is warmAs an unimportant clerkWrites I DO NOT LIKE MY WORKOn a pink official form.

Unendowed with wealth or pity,Little birds with scarlet legs,Sitting on their speckled eggs,Eye each flu-infected city.

Altogether elsewhere, vastHerds of reindeer move acrossMiles and miles of golden moss,Silently and very fast.

The Fall of Rome

1

Lay your sleeping head, my love,Human on my faithless arm;Time and fevers burn awayIndividual beauty fromThoughtful children, and the graveProves the child ephemeral:But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:To lovers as they lie uponHer tolerant enchanted slopeIn their ordinary swoon,Grave the vision Venus sendsOf supernatural sympathy,Universal love and hope;While an abstract insight wakesAmong the glaciers and the rocksThe hermit’s carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelityOn the stroke of midnight passLike vibrations of a bell,And fashionable madmen raiseTheir pedantic boring cry:Every farthing of the cost,All the dreaded cards foretell,Shall be paid, but from this nightNot a whisper, not a thought,Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:Let the winds of dawn that blowSoftly round your dreaming head

Lullaby

2

To throw away the key and walk away.Not abrupt exile , the neighbours asking why,But following a line with left and right,An altered gradient at another rate,Learns more than maps upon the whitewashed wall,The hand put up to ask; and makes us wellWithout confession of the ill. All pastsAre single old past now, although some postsAre forwarded, held looking on a new view;The future shall fulfil a surer vow.Not smiling at queen over the glass rimNor making gunpowder in the top room,Not swooping at the surface still like gullsBut with prolonged drowning shall develop gills.But there are still to tempt; areas not seenBecause of blizzards or an erring signWhose guessed at wonders would be worth alleging,And lies about the cost of a night’s lodging;Travellers may sleep at inns but not attach;They sleep one night together, not asked to touch,Receive no normal welcome, not the pressed lip,Children to lift, not the assuaging lap,Crossing the pass descend the growing streamToo tired to hear except the pulses’ strum,Reach villages to ask for a bed in,Rock shutting out the sky, the old life done.

The Journey

3

From the very first coming downInto a new valley with a frownBecause of the sun and a lost-way,You certainly remain: to-dayI, crouching behind a sheep-pen, heardTravel across a sudden bird,Cry out against the storm, and foundThe year’s are a completed roundAnd love’s worn circuit re-begun,Endless with no dissenting turn.Shall see, shall pass, as we have seenThe swallow on the tile, spring’s greenPreliminary shiver, passedA solitary truck, the lastOf shunting in the Autumn. But now,To interrupt the homely brow,Thought warmed to evening through and through,Your letter comes, speaking as you,Speaking of much but not to come.

Nor speech is close nor fingers numbIf love not seldom has receivedAn unjust answer, was deceived.I, decent with the seasons, move,Different or with a different love,Nor question overmuch the nod,The stone smile of this country godThat never was more reticent,Always afraid to say more than it meant.

The Letter

4

Before this loved oneWas that one and that oneA familyAnd historyAnd ghost’s adversityWhose pleasing nameWas neighbourly shame.Before this last oneWas much to be done,Frontiers to crossAs clothes grew worseAnd coins to passIn a cheaper houseBefore this last oneBefore this loved one.

Face that the sunIs supple onMay stir but hereIs no new year;This gratitude for gifts is lessThan the old loss;Touching is shaking handsOn mortgaged lands;And smiling ofThis gracious greeting‘Good day. Good luck’Is no real meetingBut instinctive lookA backward love.

This One

5

This lunar beautyHas no history,Is complete and early;If beauty laterBear any featureIt had a loverAnd is another.

This like a dreamKeeps other time,And daytime isThe loss of this;For time is inchesAnd the heart’s changesWhere ghost has haunted,Lost and wanted.

But this was neverA ghost’s endeavourNor, finished this,Was ghost at ease;And till it passLove shall not nearThe sweetness hereNot sorrow takeHis endless look.

This Lunar Beauty

6

Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings,Walking together in a windless orchardWhere the brook runs over the gravel, far from the glacier.

Nights come bringing the snow, and the dead howlUnder headlands in their windy dwellingBecause the Adversary put too easy questionsOn lonely roads.

But happy now, though no nearer each other,We see farms lighted all along the valley;Down at the mill-shed hammering stopsAnd men go home.

Noises at dawn will bringFreedom for some, but not this peaceNo bird can contradict: passing, but is sufficient nowFor something fulfilled this hour, loved or endured.

Taller To-day

7

There are some birds in these valleysWho flutter round the carelessWith intimate appeal,By seeming kindness trained to snaring,They feel no falseness.

Under the spell completelyThey circle can serenely,And in the tricky lightThe masked hill has a purer greenness.Their flight looks fleeter.

Alas, the signal given,Fingers on trigger tighten.The real unlucky doveMust smarting fall away from brightness,Its love from living.

The Decoys

8

O lurcher-loving collier, black as night,Follow your love across the smokeless hill;Your lump is out and all the cages still;Course for her heart and do not miss,Fo Sunday soon is past and, Kate, fly not so fast,For Monday comes when none may kiss:Be marble to his soot, and to his black be white.

Madrigal

9