I myself have always thought Auden's structurally similar In Memory of
Sigmund Freud is a stronger poem that his Yeats elegy. The following
passage in particular I think as fine as any poetry written in the
past century:
=========================
. . . For about him at the very end were still
Those he had studied, the nervous and the nights,
And shades that still waited to enter
The bright circle of his recognition
Turned elsewhere with their disappointment as he
Was taken away from his old interest
To go back to the earth in London,
An important Jew who died in exile.
Only Hate was happy, hoping to augment
His practice now, and his shabby clientele
Who think they can be cured by killing
And covering the gardens with ashes.
They are still alive, but in a world he changed
Simply by looking back with no false regrets;
All that he did was to remember
Like the old and be honest like children.
He wasn't clever at all: he merely told
The unhappy Present to recite the Past
Like a poetry lesson till sooner
Or later it faltered at the line where
Long ago the accusations had begun,
And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
How rich life had been and how silly,
And was life-forgiven and more humble,
Able to approach the future as a friend
Without a wardrobe of excuses, without
A set mask of rectitude or an
Embarrassing over-familiar gesture . . .
=========================
As is the closing stanza:
=========================
One rational voice is dumb: over a grave
The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved.
Sad is Eros, builder of cities,
And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
=========================
--
===================================
Jon Corelis www.geocities.com/jgcorelis/
===================================
|