As I Walked Out One Evening

W.H. Auden

My journey with Auden started when my brother asked for a book of poetry by Auden called As I Walked Out One Evening. I ordered online at Amazon.ca, but somehow managed to accidently order 3 copies instead of one. So I kept one for myself to peruse. At first glimpse Auden opens the book with a lament: a hopeless look on love and life as a dim reflection of that comfort and contentment that we find in childhood, titled It's No Use Raising A Shout. "Great" think I "another miserable poet who has only dark and depressing views on life, someone who can't get their head out of their own behind long enough to see beauty in life." But I read on, thankfully. And I found this little gem:

Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human in my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from 

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me,

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While and abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

the hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity

On the stroke of midnight pass

like vibrations of a bell

And fashionable madman raise

Their pedantic boring cry:

Every farthing of the cost,

All the dreaded cards fortell,

Shall be paid, but from this night

Not a whisper, not a thought,

Not a kiss nor a look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

let the winds of dawn that blow

Softly round your dreaming head

Such a day of welcome show

Eye and knocking heart may bless,

Find out mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.

With this I was goosebumps. A song, a poem, a word: I know it is a piece of my heart when I get goosebumps. It is an ethereal twinkle and tickle of the beauty of life and love that brings me to a breathless agitation of spirit. Cherish life, cherish your loved ones. So, needless to say, I read on. My next favorite find:

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 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 whir and chime: 
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches form the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss.

"In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
Tomorrow or today.

"Into many green valley
Drifts of the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.

"O plunge you 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 teacup 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 if a Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her back.

"O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress;
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 neighbor
With all 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.

It is a fleeting portrayal of love, where Time is the conqueror and Death his executioner. But I see it as a warning to all lovers: If you are continually looking over you shoulder at Time, counting the wrinkles and listening for every shime, then of course "In headaches and in worry, vaguely life leaks away", and as T.S. Eliot puts it, "this is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper." So live free from this tyrant and his executioner: as folk singer Mason Jennings so simply puts it "Be Here Now", and, as I word it in one of my own poems, "[love] pardons youth and death, in the fine frenzy of age."

However, to stay on task, one last poem that I love (though found earlier on in the book than the first to poems, it was found upon a second perusing). It is full of sweetness:

Now Through Night's Caressing Grip

Now through night's caressing grip

Earth and all her oceans slip,

Capes of China slide away

From her fingers into day

And the Americas incline

Coasts towards her shadow line.

Now the ragged vagrants creep

Into crooked holes to sleep:

Just and unjust, worst and best,

Change their places as they rest:

Awkward lovers lie in fields

Where disdainful beauty yeilds:

While the splendid and the proud

Naked stand before the crowd

And the losing gambler gains

And the beggar entertains:

May sleep's healing power extend

Through these hours to our friend.

Unpursued by hostile force,

Traction engine, bull or horse

Or revolting Succubus;

Calmly till the morning break

Let him lie, then gently wake.

Like the first poem, it is a gentle lullaby that sends out a heart-filled wish for the protection of loved ones while they sleep. But it is not a 'one-toned wish' he describes the dream world as refuge for the unfulfilled.

All in all a good book of poetry. His style is accessible but brimming with wisdom and profundity. Wystan Hugh Auden was born February 21st 1907 and died September 29th 1973. He grew up in Birmingham (England), but later moved to America where he eventually became known as a master of his craft (though a controversial one!) and a prolific one at that.