Yet another class has ended-Modern British Poetry (online). It was a good class, well organized, and I think I learned a lot about Auden, Eliot, Stevie Smith, and Yeats-love that Yeats! Just wanted to make this last notation for the semester as I won't be back on til perhaps the Spring. I wish myself good luck and God speed...I'll need it to finish out this first semester of Graduate school. bye for now, s hamilton

Three Short Poems

W. H. Auden
“The underground roads
Are, as the dead prefer them,
Always tortuous.”


“When he looked the cave in the eye,
Hercules
Had a moment of doubt.”


"Leaning out over
The dreadful precipice,
One contemptuous tree.”

a quote by W.H. Auden
"My face looks like a wedding cake left out in the rain." I think Auden has a great face!

I think Auden is trying to say in the short poem about Hercules that even the strongest and bravest have moments of doubt, moments when the cold,dark,and unknown leave us unsettled, our reserve undermined.
And in the poem about the tree, Auden writes about living life to the fullest, living life on the edge so to speak so that the utmost can be derived--a tempting of fate,even death just to be able to say I gave it all I had. Perhaps Auden is also writing about those who stick their necks out and risk it all to write a wrong or expose an injustice--like one contemptuous tree on a lonely precipice.
In the first short poem, well I cannot even get close on this one--perhaps Auden is writing about hell....hmmm. thanks, s hamilton

In the Night

I longed for companionship rather,
But my companions I always wished farther.
And now in the desolate night
I think only of the people i should like to bite.

by Stevie Smith

I think Smith is saying that when she was younger she wished for many friends and companions to fillup her days and ways. But when the so called friends and companions did inhabit her life, she was always disappointed by them and only ended up wishing them away. Now that she is older and wiser- and as she spends her solitary, lonely nights thinking back - she remembers all those people who proved to be hateful, or unloyal, even detestable and would actually like to bite them out of some kind of revenge for wasting her time. thanks, s hamilton