Chapter Poems of Poems - Study Guide by W. H. Auden

lovers this moment - conversely the hermit who has already had a spiritual vision ("The hermit’s sensual ecstasy") is given bodily ecstasy - for the lovers a boundary still exists between the two.

The spell that has been cast by the previous two stanzas of the poem is broken by the intrusion from the outside world ("Certainty, fidelity / On the stroke of midnight pass / Like vibrations of a bell"). The anticipatory idea of free choice is set in opposition against acceptance. There is a Cinderella expectation that certainty and fidelity will pass. The last stanza acknowledges the fact that physical and spiritual love, eroticism and so on are all subject to the movement of time. Although the overall theme behind the poem is that we are being instructed to enjoy love now and pay for all the comes after it later, each of the stanzas develop on this point thus creating their own themes too. In the first stanza time poses the threat to the lovers, in the second it is the distinction between the lover’s minds and bodies, the third anticipates the extentialist idea of choice before automatic acceptance and the fourth is almost a celebration of sex. Within the second and fourth stanza’s Freud’s ideas are most prevalent. Thus it obvious that although the stanza’s work together they also function on a separate basis.

"Musee des Beaux Arts" (December 1938)

Essentially this is a contemplation of the silent suffering of humanity. It refers to the painting "The Fall of Icarus" by Breueghel. In this painting the seemingly momentus event of Icarus falling from the sky is ignored by the surrounding people as they continue with their everyday chores. Auden refers to this painting by way of proving that people suffer in isolation, remaining anonymous to the rest of the world:

"The ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure"

Auden’s comment on the tragically selfish nature of society is enhanced by the form tha the uses to describe it. Metrically the poem is quite precise, with decasyllabic lines and complete rhymes (such as "wrong" and "along"). Despite this formal structure the tone remains controversial and the rhyme is subtle, a scheme not being followed.

Tragic details, and pathetic visions such as Icarus’ "forsaken cry" and the image of the "aged; reverently, passionately waiting / For the miraculous birth" give the poem a certain poignancy. Moreover their juxtaposition with the banal and everyday make them all the more glaring. Farcical images such as dogs who:

"Go on with their doggy

Life and the torturer’s horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree"

add a comical element to the poem. They seem out of place in the world of the ‘Old Masters’ and mythical legends such as Icarus.