Auden, the distinguished poet, playwright and author, was of the opinion that "a poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language" (W.H. Auden n. pag.). In his poem "Lullaby" (Auden 29), there is a clear focus on the expression of love. The speaker, who is talking to his sleeping beloved, thinks about the fact that beauty is not everlasting, because as human beings, we are all subject to mortality. Despite the speaker's negative wandering thoughts, he wants to treasure the night with his lover. He speaks directly to his beloved – praying, though not in a religious manner, that his sleeping beloved will fully experience life and never be troubled by life's unanswered questions. (Lullaby n. pag.) This commentary essay on the language of love will focus on what the speaker sets out to achieve in the poem and how he accomplishes this. The stanzas will be analyzed individually, paying close attention to the notions of diction, figures of speech and rhetoric, tone and form. .
For the purpose of this discussion it is important to note Auden's sexual orientation; he was gay. Seeing the content in its period of time, it may be seen as controversial. The majority of his love poems was autobiographical and therefore it may be assumed that the beloved in Lullaby is a man. The poem is without a doubt directly spoken to one specific person. This implies that the beloved is the addressee in the poem. (Lullaby n. pg.) The beginning of the poem is very intimate and it also takes on a form of command: the beloved must lay his head on the speaker's arm. The introductory part of the spoken lullaby focuses on mere humanity, mortality and time; what makes people human: "Human on my faithless arm" (line 2). The reader may start to think about the things that relate to the idea of humanity and mortality: the body, brain and heart – all transitory parts.
In the case of W.H. ... This poem can be seen as Auden's perspective of his father's profession. ... These images are found in one of his later poems "In Praise of Limestone"... It is obvious that the occurrences in the life of W.H. Auden influenced his writing. ...
W.H. Auden: A Man of his Words Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets; When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter, And w...
W.H. Auden writes the poem, "Funeral Blues," in 1940 (802). In the poem, "Funeral Blues," Auden talks about the loss of a person's loved one and feels as if their life is over. ... There isn't a happy ending in this poem, it's all about sadness, and death. ... Auden brings across very strong feeling of grief and depression that can happen after a loved one dies. ...
W.H. ... In "Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone" the speaker says, "I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong" (Auden 12). ... In "Stop all the clock, cut off the telephone," Auden uses personification by comparing the loved one to different inanimate objects. ... He also states, "My moon, my midnight, my talk, my song" (Auden, line 10) giving the loved one a characteristic of him being their light in their life. ... Without the personification in Auden's poem the reader would not be able to understand how important the loved one w...
The poem I have chosen for this essay is "The Unknown Citizen". I felt the time period reflected W.H. ... "Auden's poems speak instead in a voice almost unknown to English poetry science the eighteenth century: the voice of a citizen who knows the obligations of his citizenship (Mendalson 113)." ... People today move so fast, they never get a chance to slow down and realize that there are more important things in life than being the picture perfect, like love and happiness. I felt the time period reflected W.H. ...
Refugee Blues is a poem written by W.H. ... W.H. ... W.H. ... W.H. Auden uses repetition for many reasons such as highlighting specific words or conveying the theme of love and a message about the Jews and their miserable lives. ...
My personal response that I acquired from W.H. ... Auden's poem is very insightful and it exhibits hope to its readers. ... This poem was widely circulated on the internet after September 11, 2001 mainly because it discusses hope and the important of love in hard times. ... This hope and justice were their "ironic points of light" I agree with Auden's view that "We must love one another or die". ... Auden's poem is significant in learning from the past so that people will not repeat such tragedies....
If we take a look closer at our society we can see that the society depicted in Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown is similar to the one we are living in, where people create their false image so that they can pretend of being saints, where people blame others for their mistakes although they know who did it, where people love to find faults in each other. ... The poem Unknown Citizen, written by W.H Auden is a satiric poem, in this poem he described a modern citizen of the society and critiqued on the idea of conformity i.e. he criticized the modern society's criteria of judging the co...
