[Curtis Gale Weeks]

A New Age

So an age ended, and its last deliverer died
In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe:
The sudden shadow of a giant's enormous calf
Would fall no more at dusk across their lawns outside.

The Collected Poetry of W. H. Auden, copyright 1941 by W. H. Auden, has it written this way:

And the age ended, and the last deliverer died.
In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe:
The sudden shadow of the giant's enormous calf
Would fall no more at dusk across the lawn outside.

The change in articles and possessive pronouns makes a big difference, I think: "an age" vs. "The age"--"its...deliverer" vs. "the...deliverer"--"a giant's...calf" vs. "the giant's...calf"--"their lawns" vs. "the lawn." The choice of "an, its, a" make the scene generic, whereas the choice of "The" make it specific (He's talking about a specific event/period in the version I've posted.) Interestingly, "their lawns" places focus on the victims whereas "the lawn" retains a focus on the situation itself.

They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt
A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death,
But in a year the spoor had vanished from the heath;
A kobold's knocking in the mountain petered out.

"They," the former victims, are already forgetting the former menace. They're at peace, whereas the deliverer has died unhappy with the new situation--but he/she is dead, as "gone" as the former menace appears to be to the erstwhile victims.

Only the sculptors and the poets were half sad,
And the pert retinue from the magician's house
Grumbled and went elsewhere. The vanquished powers were glad

Hmmm. There's a subtle suggestion that the sculptors, poets, and magician's retinue share something in common with a/the deliverer who has died--a bit of sadness about the new peace. However, the former menace is glad like the "they" who sleep in peace: subtle reference to the fact that the "they" bear similarities with the menace.

To be invisible and free; without remorse
Struck down the sons who strayed into their course,
And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad.

My version has:

To be invisible and free: without remorse
Struck down the sons who strayed their course
And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad.

The colon here is interesting: Auden's delivering the summation of the poem overtly. "Strayed into their course" vs. "strayed their course" makes a big difference. I think that the version without "into" has a bigger punch in this stanza: Auden wrote this poem in a sequence of sonnets entitled In Time of War but he wrote them in a mythological way, referencing the internal evil/ignorance which causes war; "strayed into their course" makes the menace seem like something exterior to the "they," but "strayed their course" is a powerful hint that the menace is internal, operating through the sons. (From another sonnet in the sequence: "They wept and quarreled: freedom was so wild.")

I recently critiqued a poem on another website which seems to be saying the same thing as Auden was saying: we forget what we should remember, and this ignorance ultimately causes unhappiness for us. It's cyclical; Auden loved cyclical notions. He's written the first ten lines rhetorically--ending most of the lines with completed sentences/independent clauses--but uses sharp enjambment in the eleventh and twelfth lines to create tension/suspense, then returns to a rhetorical stance with the final two lines. Most of Auden's poems are in this bardic/shaman speech: he was fond of lecturing with his poetry. This poem is a metaphorical fable, a cautionary myth.

The reason that poets, sculptors (artists, generally) and the wizard's retinue are "half sad," is the fact that something spiritual yet "dark" by contemporary standards was the menace. This poem could quite conceivably be an argument against the rational thinking and mechanization of the modern world and for the romantic notion and spirituality which has declined as a force...

"Sad, glad, mad," are common rhymes fit into the poem to make it seem more relevant to a general audience; a "hailing."

I once read this poem to a group of Wiccans who I think hated me for doing so: I received exclamations and some sharp hisses for suggesting that that "mystical" force had vanished from the world, or that the magician's retinue have all grumbled and departed, or that that force now struck down people, raped them, and drove them mad--heresies, in their book.