It's a good little poem, certainly, rather touching,
but much too funny to be at all mawkish. But I'd have
to agree with Alan that there are a good many better
poems in Auden, both early and not so early. By the
way, Caleb, he's not keeping a strict syllable count---
the lines vary from 8 to 11 syllables; they're just easy
four-beaters. And it is a bit like Frost, but if you
want Auden loud and clear (and self-consciously) in the
Frost mode, the poem you want is

THEIR LONELY BETTERS

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade
To all the noises that my garden made,
It seemed to me only proper that words
Should be withheld from vegetables and birds.

A robin with no Christian name ran through
The Robin-Anthem, which was all it knew,
And rustling flowers for some third party waited
To say which pairs, if any, should get mated.

Not one of them was capable of lying.
There was not one which knew that it was dying
Or could have with a rhythm or a rhyme
Assumed responsibility for time.

Let them leave language to their lonely betters
Who count some days and long for certain letters;
We, too, make noises when we laugh or weep:
Words are for those with promises to keep.


Not as good as Frost, no doubt, but a lovely tribute
to the style, no? (Except for the third line; in
order to scan, it must have trochees in the third and
fourth feet---very clumsy rhythmically, surprisingly
so for the almost always sure-footed Auden.)

You know what, actually after mulling in over some time, I'm actually going to go out on a limb and outright disagree with Alan. The ending, and including the last line, of The More Loving One, is actually good. This poem sort of worked its way under my skin, in part because I was trying to figure out what the last line had that I liked. As I said before, the rhyme and simple language I think makes it easy to see the last line as an afterthought, an amusement, dashed off. Though it is humorous, it's also sad because it fuses the central struggle of the poem together. The narrator is struggling with his intellectual understanding of the way things are, but that often makes no difference to the emotions. He knows that life goes on no matter the loss, and that one can even get used to and come to love the absence. But that is an intellectual understanding, and his emotions will need time. Even without the biographical context (which Len kindly supplied) this poem is clearly about love lost, and it is a bit more subtle and rich than I first thought. So, in my earlier post I said the poem was "a good minor lyric," and now I think it is a very good minor lyric.

Joel, if we differ over the "very," that's a fairly small difference!

Thanks to Robert for posting "Their Lonely Betters." I like the double trochaic substitution in line 3, even though Auden himself (in the intro to Vol. 1 of the Auden/Pearson anthology) said such variations were bad metrical practice. The phrasing strikes me as a nice conversational flourish, and a good example of the ear outsmarting the brain.

Alan Sullivan

Well, some random thoughts from the old gas-bag himself:

I suppose we could all agree that the piece is not
quite up to the standard of say, "The Shield of
Achilles" ?

Auden's later life WAS sad, and there was a decided
falling off, but before we start seeing him as a sodden
fellow sliding into "old age," perhaps we should remember
that he died at 65 or 66! I'm 52 right now, but I sure
don't plan on ending up with a face like a walnut's shell
in the next 14 years.

Totally off the wall (and not really relevant here
in a Mastery thread), how about over on the "Discerning
Eye" or in "General Talk" we start a survey: nominations
for the most pretentious poet now alive and writing in
English? I'd be happy to get things started by offering
up Jorie Graham and Anne Carson. Any takers?

"The More Loving One", it seems to me, is a perfectly great poem which immediately recalls "One Evening":

"I'll love you dear, I'll love you
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTTill China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTAnd the salmon sing in the street.

I'll love you till the ocean
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTIs folded and hung up to dry,
And the seven stars go squawking
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTLike geese about the sky."

etc.

"O stand, stand at the window
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTAs the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbor
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTWith your crooked heart."

Auden has the precision of Rimbaud:

I see barns falling, fences broken,
Pasture not ploughland, weeds not wheat.
The great houses remain but only half are inhabited,
Dusty the gunrooms and the stable clocks stationary.
Some have been turned into prep-schools where the diet is in BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTthe hands of an experienced matron,
Others into club-houses for the golf-bore and the top-hole.
Those who sang in the inns at evening have departed; they saw BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTtheir hope in another country,
Their children have entered the service of the suburban areas; BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTthey have become typists, mannequins and factory BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSToperatives; they desired a different rhythm of life.
But their places are taken by another population, with views BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTabout nature,
Brought in charabanc and saloon along arterial roads;
Tourists to whom the Tudor cafés
Offer Bovril and buns upon Breton ware
With leather work as a sideline: Filling stations
Supplying petrol from rustic pumps.
Those who fancy themselves as foxes or desire a special setting BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTfor spooning
Erect their villas at the right places,
Airtight, lighted, elaborately warmed;
And nervous people who will never marry
Live upon dividends in the old-world cottages
With an animal for friend or a volume of memoirs.

Man is changed by his living; but not fast enough.
His concern to-day is for that which yesterday did not occur.
In the hour of the Blue Bird and the Bristol Bomber, his thoughts BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTare appropriate to the years of the Penny Farthing:
He tosses at night who at noonday found no truth.

I spent my schooldays basking in the afterglow of his personality, as idle as that sounds, and that magnificent face, only to be compared with Beckett's, and reading The Dyer's Hand and A Certain World ("A Commonplace Book") and learning some of his verses, and later listening to the recordings he made which surprised me by certain informalities ("ta" for "to"), even though it was years later I noticed the unmistakable Churchillian accent of T.S. Eliot, by comparison.

Godard might describe "Their Lonely Betters" as "severe" (l.3 is balanced, I calculate, by l.13). It appears to be confuted by Frost's "Oven Bird", who "says that leaves are old and that for flowers/Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten./He says the early petal-fall is past", among many other things, and still more by his "Departmental", in which "word goes forth in Formic", but confirmed by "Waspish":

Poor egoist, he has no way of knowing
But he's as good as anybody going.

When Auden writes a chorus, it stays writ, dream and all:

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 toward 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 yields:
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.



[This message has been edited by Christopher Mulrooney (edited February 24, 2001).]