Love’s happiness and bliss is fragile, but ‘Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough’. Four of the poems happen to be conceived as cabaret songs (grouped by Auden under the heading ‘Four Cabaret songs for Miss Hedli Anderson’), the musical qualities of the stanza’s are exquisite.Īuden doesn’t shun the impermanence of love and his take on it is wise as well as soothing. Tones and moods vary and flow natural like waves along with the rhyming over a spectrum of love related experiences, from the bliss and excitement of (new) love ( Calypso), the expression of gratefulness having found love ( Song), erotic delight, harmony and infidelity ( Lullaby), unrequited love ( Johnny), until the grieving for the loss of love and finally of the beloved ( Funeral Blues). Will it come like a change in the weather? When it comes, will it come without warning Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges?
The first man on the moon was hugh grant hope full#
And a ‘All the poems I have written were written for love’.Īs our local library essentially focuses its foreign poetry collection on (mostly flimsy) collections of love poetry, it seems like almost every encounter with a (non-Dutch) poet unapologetically first acquaintances me with a glimpse into their treatment of love – this another bilingual edition of ten poems on the apparently inexhaustible theme, as pretty obvious from the title poem, one of my favourites from this collection.Īnd a delectable collection it is, loveable, vivid and frisky like a kitten, ‘soft as eiderdown fluff’, wittily playing with symbols of romantic love, languid when resting of playing ( Lullaby), but also high-spirited and even in its profound musings on the nature of love, the supremacy of time, on loss and mourning, full of life. (W.H.Auden) As our local library essentially focuses its foreign poetry collection on (mostly flimsy) collections of love poetry, it seems like almost every encounter with a (non-Dutch) poet unapologetically first acquaintances me with a glimpse into their treatment of love – this another bilingual edition of ten poems on the apparently inexhaustible theme, as pretty obvious from the title poem, one of my favourites from this collection. ‘All the poems I have written were written for love’. "Let the living creature lie, / Mortal, guilty, but to me, / The entirely beautiful." It leaves much unexplained, yet quite particular, so that it draws one back again and again: "Lay your sleeping head, my love, / Human on my faithless arm." What an astonishing opener. Here he evokes the preciousness of one night spent with someone who isn't his. "Lullaby" retains immense mystery and power. "He was my North, my South, my East and West, / My working week and my Sunday rest." "The stars are not wanted now put out every one." He swings from the grandiose to the mundane and in doing so, sweeps the reader up in the aura of all-emcompassing love. He declares the emblems of romance redundant. The Cole Porter tone of flippancy and humour-"Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves", makes the understated grief all the more poignant. "Funeral Blues" captures the sense of disbelief that the world has the audacity to continue after one has been bereaved. But for dipping into Auden's work, this volume serves its purpose. "At Last the Secret is Out" must have been tongue-in-cheek considering Auden's sexuality, yet the cover of this slim tome is resolutely heterosexual. Many of the poems have the same jolly air and belting rhythm and indeed were written as cabaret songs. "For there in the middle of that waiting-hall, / Should be standing the one that I love best of all." The period partly coincides with Auden going to America in January 1939 and "Calypso" pulses with the rhythm of a train taking him to his New York rendez-vous at Grand Central. Stretching from October 1932 to June 1948, the poems may have been more revelatory had they been arranged chronologically but commercial demands have placed "Funeral Blues", forevermore known as the poem in the movie, at the end, while "Lullaby", arguably a better poem, is tucked away inside.
Auden might well have penned a poem entitled "Tell me the Truth About Publishing", for the publication of this special, short collection was directly inspired by the runaway success of the 1994 film Four Weddings and a Funeral in which one of Auden's poems was recited. Stretching from October 1932 to June 1948, the poems may have been more rev Had he been writing now, W.H.
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