The Fall of Rome W. H. Auden

 

(for Cyril Connolly)

 

 

The piers are pummelled by the waves;

In a lonely field the rain

Lashes an abandoned train;

Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

 

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;

Agents of the Fisc pursue

Absconding tax-defaulters through

The sewers of provincial towns.

 

Private rites of magic send

The temple prostitutes to sleep;

All the literati keep

An imaginary friend.

 

Cerebrotonic Cato may

Extol the Ancient Disciplines,

But the muscle-bound Marines

Mutiny for food and pay.

 

Caesar's double-bed is warm

As an unimportant clerk

Writes I DO NOT LIKE MY WORK

On a pink official form.

 

Unendowed with wealth or pity,

Little birds with scarlet legs,

Sitting on their speckled eggs,

Eye each flu-infected city.

 

Altogether elsewhere, vast

Herds of reindeer move across

Miles and miles of golden moss,

Silently and very fast.

 

 

TWO SONGS FOR HEDLI ANDERSON

 

 

I

 

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,

Put cr?pe bows round the white necks of the public

doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

 

 

II

 

O the valley in the summer where I and my John

Beside the deep river would walk on and on

While the flowers at our feet and the birds up above

Argued so sweetly on reciprocal love,

And I leaned on his shoulder; 'O Johnny, let's play':

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

 

O that Friday near Christmas as I well recall

When we went to the Charity Matinee Ball,

The floor was so smooth and the band was so loud

And Johnny so handsome I felt so proud;

'Squeeze me tighter, dear Johnny, let's dance till it's day':

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

 

Shall I ever forget at the Grand Opera

When music poured out of each wonderful star?

Diamonds and pearls they hung dazzling down

Over each silver and golden silk gown;

'O John I'm in heaven,' I whispered to say:

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

 

O but he was fair as a garden in flower,

As slender and tall as the great Eiffel Tower,

When the waltz throbbed out on the long promenade

O his eyes and his smile they went straight to my heart;

'O marry me, Johnny, I'll love and obey':

But he frowned like thunder and he went away.

 

O last night I dreamed of you, Johnny, my lover,

You'd the sun on one arm and the moon on the other,

The sea it was blue and the grass it was green,

Every star rattled a round tambourine;

Ten thousand miles deep in a pit there I lay:

But you frowned like thunder and you went away.

 

 

Give me a doctor

 

 

Give me a doctor partridge-plump,

Short in the leg and broad in the rump,

An endomorph with gentle hands

Who'll never make absurd demands

That I abandon all my vices

Nor pull a long face in a crisis,

But with a twinkle in his eye

Will tell me that I have to die.

 

 

 

 

О тиранах

 

 

Small tyrants, threatened by big,

Sincerely believe

They love Liberty.

 

 

* * *

 

Tyrants may get slain,

But their hangmen usually

Die in their beds.

 

 

* * *

 

The tyrant's device:

Whatever is Possible

Is Necessary.

 

 

* * *

 

When Chiefs of State

Prefer to work at night,

Let the citizen beware.

 

 

Iceland revisited

(for Basil and Susan Boothby)

Encounter July 1964

 

 

* * *

 

Unwashed, unshat,

He was whisked from the plane

To a lunch in his honour.

 

 

* * *

 

He hears a 1oud-speaker

Call him wen known,

But knows himself no better.

 

 

* * *

 

The desolate fjord

Denied the possibility

Of many gods.

 

 

* * *

 

Twenty-eight years ago

Three slept well here.

Now one is married, one dead,

 

Where the harmonium stood

A radio:

Have the Fittest survived?

 

 

* * *

 

Unable to speak Icelandic,

He helped instead

To do the dishes.

 

 

* * *

 

The bondi's sheep-dog

and the visitor from New York

Conversed freely.

 

 

* * *

 

Snow had camouflaged

The pool of liquid manure:

The town-mouse fell in.

 

 

* * *

 

A blizzard. A bare room.

Thoughts of the past.

He forgot to wind his watch.

 

 

* * *

 

The gale howled over lava. Suddenly,

In the storm's eye,

A dark speck,

 

Perseus in an air-taxi,

Come to snatch

Shivering Andromeda

 

Out of the wilderness

And bring her back

To hot baths, cocktails, habits.

 

 

* * *

 

Once more

A child's dream verified

The magical light beyond Hekla.

 

 

* * *

 

Fortunate island,

Where all men are equal

But not vulgar-not yet.

 

 

THE PRESUMPTUOUS

 

 

They noticed that virginity was needed

To trap the unicorn in every case,

But not that, of those virgins who succeeded,

A high percentage had an ugly face.

 

The hero was a daring as they thought him,

But these peculiar boyhood missed them all;

The angel with the broken leg had taught him

The right precautions to avoid a fall.

 

So in presumption they set forth alone

On what, for them, was not compulsory:

And stuck hallway to settle in some cave

With desert lions in domesticity

Or turned aside to be absurdly brave

And met the ogre and were turned on stone.

 

 

Короткие стихи 1929-1931

 

 

Pick a quarrel, go to war,

Leave the hero in the bar;

Hunt the lion, climb the peak:

No one guesses you are weak.

 

 

The friends of the born nurse

Are always getting worse.

 

 

When he is well

She gives him hell;

But she's a brick

When he is sick.

 

 

You’re a long way off becoming a saint

So long as you suffer from any complaint;

But, if you don’t, there’s no denying

The chances are that you’re not trying.

 

 

I am afraid there is many a spectacled sod

Prefers the British Museum to God.

 

 

I'm beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

 

 

Those who will not reason

Perish in the act;

Those who will not act

Perish for that reason.

 

 

Let us honor if we can

The vertical man,

Though we value none

But the horizontal one.

 

 

'These had stopped seeking

But went on speaking,

Have not contributed

But have diluted.

 

These ordered light

But had no right,

These handed on

War and a son.

 

Wishing no harm

But to be warm,

These fell asleep.

On the burning heap.

 

 

Private faces

In public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces

In private places.

 

 

* * *

 

I'm beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

 

 

* * *

 

Thoughts of his own death,

like the distant roll

of thunder at a picnic.

 

 

* * *

 

Bound to ourselves for life,

we must learn how to

put up with each other.

 

 

* * *

 

Fate succumbs

many species: one alone

jeopardises itself.

 

 

* * *

 

The palm extended in welcome:

Look! for you

I have unclenched my fist.

 

 

* * *

 

Animal femurs,

ascribed to saints who never

existed, are still

 

more holy than portraits

of conquerors who,

unfortunately, did.

 

 

* * *

 

Pulling on his socks,

he recall that his gran-pa

went pop in the act.

 

 

* * *

 

Man must either fall in love

with Someone or Something,

or else fall ill.

 

 

* * *

 

Nothing can be loved too much,

but all things can be loved

in the wrong way.

 

 

* * *

 

I'm for freedom because I mistrust the Censor in office,

But if I held the job, my! how severe I should be!

 

 

* * *

 

When he is well

She gives him hell;

But she's a brick

When he is sick.

 

 

They wondered why the fruit had been forbidden…

 

 

They wondered why the fruit had been forbidden:

It taught them nothing new. They hid their pride,

But did not listen much when they were chidden:

They knew exactly what to do outside.

 

They left. Immediately the memory faded

Of all they known: they could not understand

The dogs now who before had always aided;

The stream was dumb with whom they'd always planned.

 

They wept and quarrelled: freedom was so wild.

In front maturity as he ascended

Retired like a horizon from the child,

 

The dangers and the punishments grew greater,

And the way back by angels was defended

Against the poet and the legislator.

 

 

At last the secret is out…

 

 

At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end,

The delicious story is ripe to tell to the intimate friend;

Over the tea-cups and in the square the tongue has its desire;

Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire.

 

Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,

Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,

Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh

There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.

 

For the clear voice suddenly singing, high up on the cement wall,

The scent of the elder bushes, the sporting prints in the hall,

The croquet matches in summer, the handshake, the cough, the kiss,

There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this.

 

 

The Chimney Sweepers

 

 

The chimney sweepers

Wash their faces and forget to wash the neck;

The lighthouse keepers

Let the lamps go out and leave the ships to wreck;

The prosperous baker

Leaves the rolls in hundreds in the oven to burn;

The undertaker

Puts a small note on the coffin saying: "Wait till I return,

I've got a date with Love!"

 

And deep-sea divers

Cut their boots off and come bubbling to the top;

And engine drivers

Bring expresses in the tunnel to a stop;

The village rector

Dashes down the side-aisle half-way through a psalm;

The sanitary inspector

Runs off with the cover of the cesspool on his arm —

To keep his date with Love!

 

 

"What's in Your Mind, My Dove, My Coney…"

 

 

What's in your mind, my dove, my coney;

Do thoughts grow like feathers, the dead end of life;

Is it making of love or counting of money,

Or raid on the jewels, the plans of a thief?

 

Open your eyes, my dearest dallier;

Let hunt with your hands for escaping me;

Go through the motions of exploring the familiar

Stand on the brink of the warm white day.

 

Rise with the wind, my great big serpent;

Silence the birds and darken the air;

Change me with terror, alive in a moment;

Strike for the heart and have me there.

 

 

Happy Ending

 

 

The silly fool, the silly fool

Was sillier in school

But beat the bully as a rule

 

The youngest son, the youngest son

Was certainly no wise one

Yet could surprise one.

 

Or rather, or rather,

To be posh, we gather

One should have no father.

 

Simple to prove

That deeds indeed

In life succeed,

But love in love,

And tales in tales

Where no one fails.

 

 

Foxtrot from a Play

 

 

The soldier loves his rifle,

The scholar loves his books,

The farmer loves his horses,

The film star loves her looks.

There's love the whole world over

Wherever you may be;

Some lose their rest for gay Mae West,

But you're my cup of tea.

 

Some talk of Alexander

And some of Fred Astaire,

Some like their heroes hairy

Some like them debonair,

Some prefer a curate

And some an A.D.C.,

Some like a tough to treat'em rough,

But you're my cup of tea.

 

Some are mad on Airedales

And some on Pekinese,

On tabby cats or parrots

Or guinea pigs or geese.

There are patients in asylums

Who think that they're a tree;

I had an ant who loved a plant,

But you're my cup of tea.

 

Some have sagging waistlines

And some a bulbous nose

And some a floating kidney

And some have hammer toes,

Some have tennis elbow

And some have housemaid's knee,

And some I know have got B.O.,

But you're my cup of tea.

 

The blackbird loves the earthworm,

The adder loves the sun,

The polar bear an iceberg,

The elephant a bun,

The trout enjoys the river,

The whale enjoys the sea,

And dogs love most an old lamp-post,

But you're my cup of tea.

 

 

Musee des Beaux Arts

 

 

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eatting or opening a window

or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On the pond at the edge of the wood:

 

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martydrom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind in a tree.

 

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

 

 

Who is Who?

 

 

A shilling life will give you all the facts:

How Father beat him, how he ran away,

What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

Made him the greatest figure of his day

 

Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,

Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea:

Some of the last researchers even write

Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

 

With all his honours on, he sighed for one,

Who, say astonished critics, lived at home;

Did little jobs about the house with skill

And nothing else; could whistle; would sit still

Or potter round the garden; answered some

Of his long marvelous letters but kept none

 

 

The Ship

 

 

All streets are brightly lit; our city is kept clean;

Her Third-Class deal from greasy packs, her First bid high;

Her beggars banished to the bows have never seen

What can be done in state-rooms: no one asks why.

 

Lovers are writing latters, athletes playing ball,

One doubts the virtue, one the beauty of his wife,

A boy's ambitious: perhaps the Captain hates us all;

Someone perhaps is leading a civilised life.

 

Slowly our Western culture in full pomp progresses

Over the barren plains of the sea; somewhere ahead

A septic East, odd fowl and flowers, odder dresses:

 

Somewhere a strange and shrewd To-morrow goes to bed,

Planning a test for men from Europe; no one guesses

Who will be most ashamed, who richer, and who dead.

 

 

"O, Tell Me The Truth About Love"

 

 

Some say that love 's a little boy,

And some say it's a bird,

Some say it makes the world go round,

And some say that's absurd,

And when I asked the man next-door,

Who looked as if he knew,

His wife got very cross indeed,

And said it wouldn't do.

 

Does it look like a pair of pyjamas,

Or the ham in a temperance hotel?

Does its odour remind one of llamas,

Or has it a comforting smell?

Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is,

Or soft as eiderdown fluff?

Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?

O tell me the truth about love.

 

Our history books refer to it

In cryptic little notes.

It's quite a common topic on

The Transatlantic boats;

I've found the subject mentioned in

Account of suicides,

And even seen it scribbled on

The back of railway-guides.

 

Does it howl like a hungry Alsatian,

Or boom like a military band?

Could one give a first-rate imitation

On a saw or a Steinway Grand?

Is it's singing at parties a riot?

Does it only like classical stuff?

Will it stop when one wants to be quiet?

O tell me the truth about love.

 

I looked inside the summer-house;

It wasn't ever there:

I tried the Thames at Maidenhead,

And Brighton's bracing air.

I don't know what the blackbird sang,

Or what the tulip said;

But it wasn't in the chicken-run,

Or underneath the bed.

 

Can it pull extraordinary faces?

Is it usually sick on a swing?

Does it spend all its time at the races,

Or fiddling with pieces of string?

Has it views of its own about money?

Does it think Patriotism enough?

Are its stories vulgar but funny?

O tell me the truth about love.

 

When it comes, will it come without warning

Just as I'm picking my nose?

Will it knock on my door in the morning,

Or tread in the bus on my toes?

Will it come like a change in the weather?

Will its greeting be courteous or rough?

Will it alter my life altogether?

O tell me the truth about love.

 

 

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.

 

 

Shorts

 

 

Pick a quarrel, go to war,

Leave the hero in the bar;

Hunt the lion, climb the peak:

No one guesses you are weak.

 

The friends of the born nurse

Are always getting worse.

 

I'm beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

 

I'm for freedom because I mistrust the Censor in office,

But if I held the job, my! how severe I should be!

 

When he is well

She gives him hell;

But she's a brick

When he is sick.

 

Those who will not reason

Perish in the act;

Those who will not act

Perish for that reason.

 

Let us honor if we can

The vertical man,

Though we value none

But the horizontal one.

 

Private faces

In public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces

In private places.

 

The conversation of birds

Say very little,

But mean a great deal.

 

Among the mammals

Only Man has ears

That can display no emotion.

 

In moments of joy

All of us wish we possessed

A tail we could wag.

 

The shame in ageing

is not that Desire should fail

(Who mourns for something

he no longer needs?): it is

That someone else must be told.

 

The tyrant's device:

Whatever is Posiible

Is Necessary.

 

Passing Beauty

still delights him,

but he no longer

has to turn round.

 

Does God ever judge us

by appearances?

I suspect that He does.

 

Today two poems begged to be written: I had to refuse them.

Sorry, no longer, my dear! Sorry, my precious, not yet!

 

Only look in the mirror to detect a removable blamish,

As of the permanent ones already you know quite enough.

 

God never makes knots,

But is expert, if asked to,

At untying them.

 

A poet's hope: to be,

Like some valley cheese,

Local, but prized elsewhere.

 

 

WORDS

 

 

A sentence uttered makes a world appear

Where all things happen as it says they do;

We doubt the speaker, not the tongue we hear:

Words have no word for words that are not true.

 

Syntactically, though, it must be clear;

One cannot change the subject half-way through,

Nor alter tenses to appease the ear:

Arcadian tales are hard-luck stories too.

 

But should we want to gossip all the time,

Were fact not fiction for us at its best,

Or find a charm in syllables that rhyme,

 

Were not our fate by verbal chance expressed,

As rustics in a ring-dance pantomime

The Knight at some lone cross-roads of his quest?

 

 

Uncle Henry

 

 

When the Flyin’ Scot [260]

fills for shootin’, I go southward,

wisin’ after coffee, leavin’

Lady Starkie.

 

Weady for some fun,

visit yearly Wome, Damascus,

in Mowocco look for fwesh a —

— musin’ places.

 

Where I’ll find a fwend,

don’t you know, a charmin’ creature,

like a Gweek God and devoted:

how delicious!

 

All they have they bwing,

Abdul, Nino, Manfwed, Kosta:

here’s to women for they bear such

lovely kiddies!

 

 

Adolescence

 

"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the still waters."

(King James Bible, Psalms 23:2) [261]

 

 

By landscape reminded once of his mother's figure

The mountain heights he remembers get bigger and bigger

With the finest of mapping pens he fondly traces

All the family names on the familiar places.

 

In a green pasture straying, he walks by still waters;

Surely a swan he seems to earth's unwise daughters,

Bending a beautiful head, worshipping not lying,

'Dear' the dear beak in the dear concha crying.

 

Under the trees the summer bands were playing;

'Dear boy, be brave as these roots', he heard them saying:

Carries the good news gladly to a world in danger,

Is ready to argue, he smiles, with any stranger.

 

And yet this prophet, homing the day is ended,

Receives odd welcome from the country he so defended:

The band roars 'Coward, Coward', in his human fever,

The giantess shuffles near, cries 'Deceiver'.

 

 

Are You There?

 

 

Each lover has some theory of his own

About the difference between the ache

Of being with his love, and being alone:

 

Why what, when dreaming, is dear flesh and bone

That really stirs the senses, when awake,

Appears a simulacrum of his own.

 

Narcissus disbelieves in the unknown;

He cannot join his image in the lake

So long as he assumes he is alone.

 

The child, the waterfall, the fire, the stone,

Are always up to mischief, though, and take

The universe for granted as their own.

 

The elderly, like Proust, are always prone

To think of love as a subjective fake;

The more they love, the more they feel alone.

 

Whatever view we hold, it must be shown

Why every lover has a wish to make

Some kind of otherness his own:

Perhaps, in fact, we never are alone.

 

 

Blues (For Hedli Anderson)

 

 

Ladies and gentlemen, sitting here,

Eating and drinking and warming a chair,

Feeling and thinking and drawing your breath,

Who’s sitting next to you? It may be Death.

 

As a high-stepping blondie with eyes of blue

In the subway, on beaches, Death looks at you;

And married or single or young or old,

You’ll become a sugar daddy and do as you’re told.

 

Death is a G-man. You may think yourself smart,

But he’ll send you to the hot-seat or plug you through the heart;

He may be a slow worker, but in the end

He’ll get you for the crime of being born, my friend.

 

Death as a doctor has first-class degrees;

The world is on his panel; he charges no fees;

He listens to your chest, says — "You’re breathing. That’s bad.

But don’t worry; we’ll soon see to that, my lad."

 

Death knocks at your door selling real estate,

The value of which will not depreciate;

It’s easy, it’s convenient, it’s old world. You’ll sign,

Whatever your income, on the dotted line.

 

Death as a teacher is simply grand;

The dumbest pupil can understand.

He has only one subject and that is the Tomb;

But no one ever yawns or asks to leave the room.

 

So whether you’re standing broke in the rain,

Or playing poker or drinking champagne,

Death’s looking for you, he’s already on the way,

So look out for him tomorrow or perhaps today.

 

 

Detective Story

 

 

For who is ever quite without his landscape,

The straggling village street, the house in trees,

All near the church, or else the gloomy town house,

The one with the Corinthian pillars, or

The tiny workmanlike flat: in any case

A home, the centre where the three or four things

That happen to a man do happen? Yes,

Who cannot draw the map of his life, shade in

The little station where he meets his loves

And says good-bye continually, and mark the spot

Where the body of his happiness was first discovered?

 

An unknown tramp? A rich man? An enigma always

And with a buried past but when the truth,

The truth about our happiness comes out

How much it owed to blackmail and philandering.

 

The rest's traditional. All goes to plan:

The feud between the local common sense

And that exasperating brilliant intuition

That's always on the spot by chance before us;

All goes to plan, both lying and confession,

Down to the thrilling final chase, the kill.

 

Yet on the last page just a lingering doubt:

That verdict, was it just? The judge's nerves,

That clue, that protestation from the gallows,

And our own smile… why yes…

But time is always killed. Someone must pay for

Our loss of happiness, our happiness itself.

 

 

(1936)

 

 

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.

 

They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt

A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death,

But in a year the slot had vanished from the heath;

A kobold's knocking in the mountain petered out.

 

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

 

To be invisible and free; without remorse

Struck down the silly sons who strayed into their course,

And ravished the daughters, and drove the fathers mad.

 

[262]