“Uncared for lay the dead, … / each forgotten stone / Wept by no mourner but the moaning wave.”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, another initials poet:


Autumn Song, W.H. Auden

Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse’s flowers will not last,
Nurses to their graves are gone,
But the prams go rolling on.

Whispering neighbors left and right
Daunt us from our true delight,
Able hands are forced to freeze
Derelict on lonely knees.

Close behind us on our track,
Dead in hundreds cry Alack,
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.

Scrawny through a plundered wood,
Trolls run scolding for their food,
Owl and nightingale are dumb,
And the angel will not come.

Clear, unscalable, ahead
Rise the Mountains of Instead,
From whose cold, cascading streams
None may drink except in dreams.


This is number VI of Twelve Songs, published -- and in this case also written -- in 1936. It was set to music by Benjamin Britten later that year. (Pro-tip: search on "Now the leaves are falling fast," as Britten used the title "Autumn Song" for a setting of a Chinese poem.)

---L.

Subject quote from The Jews’ Cemetery on the Lido, John Symonds.

Comments

[swan_tower]

Huh -- most of this poem just made me shrug, as it didn't do a lot for me. But I love the final stanza.

[larryhammer]

It is indeed the best, and most striking, stanza.