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7.5
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(23
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About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating 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 a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom 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 on a tree.
In Breughel'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,
had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
Click to View Breughel's "Fall of Icarus"
W.H. Auden
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Read poems about / on: horse, birth, children, tree, green, water, sky, sun, dog, child, running
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Comments about this poem (Musée des Beaux Arts
by
W.H. Auden
) |
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Click here to write your
comments about this poem (Musée des Beaux Arts by
W.H. Auden
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Michele Casey
(6/11/2009 7:18:00 PM) |
I love this poem. Someone sent it to me 35 years ago when my dad died and it spoke to me profoundly to the point where I send it now as a condolence to others.
Auden is saying that a tragedy to anyone happens and effects only those directly involved. That life goes on for everyone despite anyone's personal pain. Pain, emotional or physical. is isolated to those suffering.
Icarus was the boy whose father Daedalus made wax wings to them to fly out of imprisonment. Icarus was so enthralled with flying that, despite his father's warning, he flew too close to the sun, the wings melted and he fell into the sea. A tragedy for Icarus and his father... but those on the ship that saw him fall, probably thought, what a shame, and went on to wherever they were going.
It's a very poetic way of saying 'life goes on.'
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Karen Campbell
(12/15/2008 5:44:00 PM) |
I have a hard time interpreting the poem.Can somebody provide an interpretation for me?
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June Odom
(2/18/2008 8:49:00 AM) |
Same for me. I clicked
but did not see...
Icarus fall into the sea.
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Michael Shepherd
(9/8/2006 5:47:00 AM) |
I clicked.. but Icarus did not fall...
no matter; Auden's poems tell all.
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W.H. Auden
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