Spain. In 1940 Auden retitled as a rebellion by General Franco's right-wing army the poem 'Spain 1937,' deleted lines 69?76, and against the left-wing, elected Spanish government, made other changes; later he removed the poem was viewed by British liberal intellectuals as a test-from his canon. ing struggle between fascism and democracy. Writ-2. Ancient stone circle.
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Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines, Th e construction of railways in the colonial desert; Yesterday the classic lecture On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.
Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek, The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero; Yesterday the prayer to the sunset And the adoration of madmen. But to-day the struggle.
As the poet whispers, startled among the pines, Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright On the crag by the leaning tower: 'O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor.'
An d the investigator peers through his instruments At the inhuma n provinces, the virile bacillus Or enormous Jupiter finished: 'But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire.'
An d the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets Of the evening paper: 'Our day is our loss, O show us History the operator, the Organiser, Tim e the refreshing river.'
And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders Th e private nocturnal terror: 'Did you not found the city state of the sponge,
'Raise the vast military empires of the shark An d the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton?0 district Intervene. O descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer,3 but descend.'
An d the life, if it answers at all, replies from the heart And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city 'O no, I am not the mover; Not to-day; not to you. To you, I'm the
'Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped; I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be Good, your humorous story. I am your business voice. I am your marriage.
'What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will. I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic Death? Very well, I accept, for I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.'
3. Auden plays on the idea of a deus ex machina, the Bible the form taken by the Holy Spirit when literally a god from a machine, who appears sud-descending to Earth. denly in a play to resolve an impasse. 'Dove': in
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2426 / W. H. AUDEN
Man y have heard it on remote peninsulas, On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fishermen's islands Or the corrupt heart of the city, Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.
They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel; They floated over the oceans; They walked the passes. All presented their lives.
On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe; On that tableland scored by rivers, Ou r thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever
Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond To the medicine ad. and the brochure of winter cruises Have become invading battalions; An d our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin
Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom As the ambulance and the sandbag; Ou r hours of friendship into a people's army.
To-morrow, perhaps the future. Th e research on fatigue An d the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the Octaves of radiation; To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.
To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, Th e photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,
Th e beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager election of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.
To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.
To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, Th e conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;4 To-day the expending of powers On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.
4. After these two lines were criticized by George Orwell, Auden revised them to read 'the inevitable increase' and 'the fact of murder.'
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As I WALKED OUT ONE EVENING / 2427
To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette, Th e cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert, Th e masculine jokes; to-day the 100 Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.
Th e stars are dead. Th e animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated Ma y say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.
Mar. 1937 1937
As I Walked Out One Evening1
As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Wer e fields of harvest wheat.
5 And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
