tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2775874621771121219.post2371668816009685726..comments2023-04-28T08:25:22.105-04:00Comments on It's a Mystery to Me...: Chrstopher HitchensMystery Readerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05023651989834373090noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2775874621771121219.post-80615719318154627192011-12-18T12:43:02.567-05:002011-12-18T12:43:02.567-05:00In Memory of W. B. Yeats
by W. H. Auden
I
He...In Memory of W. B. Yeats <br />by W. H. Auden<br /><br />I<br /><br /><br />He disappeared in the dead of winter:<br />The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,<br />And snow disfigured the public statues;<br />The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.<br />What instruments we have agree <br />The day of his death was a dark cold day.<br /><br />Far from his illness<br />The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,<br />The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;<br />By mourning tongues<br />The death of the poet was kept from his poems.<br /><br />But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,<br />An afternoon of nurses and rumours;<br />The provinces of his body revolted,<br />The squares of his mind were empty,<br />Silence invaded the suburbs,<br />The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.<br /><br />Now he is scattered among a hundred cities<br />And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,<br />To find his happiness in another kind of wood<br />And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.<br />The words of a dead man<br />Are modified in the guts of the living.<br /><br />But in the importance and noise of to-morrow<br />When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,<br />And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,<br />And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,<br />A few thousand will think of this day<br />As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.<br /><br />What instruments we have agree<br />The day of his death was a dark cold day.<br /><br />II<br /><br /> You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:<br /> The parish of rich women, physical decay,<br /> Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.<br /> Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,<br /> For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives<br /> In the valley of its making where executives<br /> Would never want to tamper, flows on south<br /> From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,<br /> Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,<br /> A way of happening, a mouth.<br /><br /><br />III<br /><br /> Earth, receive an honoured guest:<br /> William Yeats is laid to rest.<br /> Let the Irish vessel lie<br /> Emptied of its poetry.<br /><br /> In the nightmare of the dark<br /> All the dogs of Europe bark,<br /> And the living nations wait,<br /> Each sequestered in its hate;<br /><br /> Intellectual disgrace<br /> Stares from every human face,<br /> And the seas of pity lie<br /> Locked and frozen in each eye.<br /><br /> Follow, poet, follow right<br /> To the bottom of the night,<br /> With your unconstraining voice<br /> Still persuade us to rejoice;<br /><br /> With the farming of a verse<br /> Make a vineyard of the curse,<br /> Sing of human unsuccess<br /> In a rapture of distress;<br /><br /> In the deserts of the heart<br /> Let the healing fountain start,<br /> In the prison of his days<br /> Teach the free man how to praise.<br /><br />From Another Time by W. H. Auden, published by Random House. Copyright © 1940 W. H. Auden, renewed by The Estate of W. H. Auden. Used by permission of Curtis Brown, Ltd.Mystery Readerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05023651989834373090noreply@blogger.com