Annie:
> This poem was discussed at a seminar on "noniambic meters" by leading
> poets & prosodists from all over the country, & many of them scanned it
> as anapests too--you're in good company. & many do the same with
> Auden's "where are you going" in Wallace's Meter in English book.
To be honest, it never occurred to me to read Auden's poem as anything other
than basically anapestic, and it still wouldn't. Or alternatively, as
four-stress verse. Either description works.
Auden wrote the poem in 1930, when he was already becoming interested in
English folksong and drawing on it in his own poetry -- he published +The
Oxford Book of Light Verse+ in 1938 -- and that's the controlling context.
I think it would be possible to parallel the structure and possibly even
some phrases from various folksongs, some probably even printed in OBLV.
So amphibrach? No possible way. I can envisage Auden trying out a poem in
amphibrachs after 1940 -- well, he tried virtually everything after he got
to America -- but not at this point in time.
Robin
O Where Are You Going?
"O where are you going?" said reader to rider,
"That valley is fatal where furnaces burn,
Yonder's the midden whose odours will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return."
"O do you imagine," said fearer to farer,
"That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking,
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?"
"O what was that bird," said horror to hearer,
"Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease."
"Out of this house"---said rider to reader,
"Yours never will"---said farer to fearer
"They're looking for you"---said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
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