In Memory of WB Yeats
I 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. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems. But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers. Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man 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. |
A form of “In Memory of W.B. Yeats” was published in the March 8, 1939, but not the form known today – the section where another of Auden’s famous lines, “poetry makes nothing happen”, currently is, was not yet written, and wasn’t added until April of that year.
In Later Auden, Mendelson notes a conflict between the newer middle section and older conclusion that he says had always been present in Auden’s work He observes that “in the middle section, poetry seeks nothing but autonomous survival in the valley of its saying…and the statement that "poetry makes nothing happen" simply means it has no effect on private or public acts. The closing section agrees that poetry has no power to enforce, but claims it has far greater powers to heal, soothe, teach, liberate, and triumph”. Kai-ling Liu also comments on this poem. She says that Auden "is not really renouncing the function of poetry. He modifies the statement by saying that poetry “survives/In the valley of its saying” – it exists in its own right regardless of all external forces, and that time “worships language” – then language is greater than time.” (221). She adds that "The function of both poets and poetry is thus reconfirmed”. Mendelson finds examples of the debate over “the power of art” in “Spain” (a rejected poem, like "September 1") and “Orpheus” as well, and a connection in "Musee des Beaux Artes", saying, "Yeats is buried in the middle of Auden's elegy and forgotten long before the end. Like "the expensive delicate ship that must have seen / Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky," in "Musée des Beaux Arts," written a few weeks earlier, Auden, and the rest of Yeats's indifferent admirers, "Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on", noting the indifference of readers to the poet as part of the value of art. This conflict, surely, can be found in “September 1”, in connection to the rest of Auden’s work. In Early Auden, Mendelson says "what the poet's voice can acheive is revelation. To expose a hidden truth, it can "undo the folded lie"". \ Auden's concluding "affirming flame" seems to be a method of having a voice, too. In 2011, Scott Simon on NPR quoted the poem as part of a tribute to 9/11 (he had read part of the poem on Morning Edition on September 15, 2001). He recounts memories of 9/11 as a way of passing them on to children who have been born since then, sharing recollections of "real heroes" and commenting on how life before seemed "a little shallow". Telling these stories of the "points of light" is how Simon interprets the "affirming flame" or the "voice" that can be exchanged as a message with "The Just." |