Auden is a realist in that he understands poetry might not directly influence anything, but its habit of calling things by their real names (the sun, the law, death, love) can bring us into a better relationship with reality. He doesn’t give the readers the fairy-tale like happily-ever-afters rather he shows them the real picture of life that comes to an end, eventually, no matter what one does.

1. Love and Death
in
W. H. Auden’s Poetry
Presenter: Hira Mukhtar
Instructor: Prof. Liaqat Masih

2. W. H. Auden
• one of the best poets of the 20th century
• exemplar of modernism along with T.S. Eliot
and Ezra Pound
• wildly inventive and diverse in his array of
forms and styles
• wrote abstruse and highly intellectual poems
having accessible language and relatable
themes

3. W. H. Auden
• known for his poems about death, tyranny,
and the role of poetry
• also renowned for his love poems
• “As I Walked Out One Evening”, “Lullaby”, and
“O Tell Me the Truth About Love”, feature
stirring passages about how beautiful and
inspiring love can be
• “Funeral Blues” features a man deeply in love
with another

4. W. H. Auden
“If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.”
(The More Loving One)

5. For Auden, love:
• is beautiful and inspiring
• has sobering trace of sorrow
• is short lived
• is affected by sickness and time
• is sweet but death cuts it short

6. For Auden, death:
• is an ever-present reality
• cuts life and love short
• affects every man, even those having fame
• can come as martyrdom, sickness, old age, or
through war
• is a natural end to human life

7. Auden’s poems
• celebrate life and love
• face the reality of death

8. Lullaby by W. H. Auden
Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

9. Lullaby (cont.)
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

10. Lullaby (cont.)
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreadful cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

11. Lullaby (cont.)
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless.
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

12. Lullaby
• is a love poem punctuated by death
• address to the sleeping loved one
• how love works in a mortal and imperfect
world
• a bit negative but affirms the value of love
• imperfection is what makes the lover "entirely
beautiful“
• thought of death is there

13. Lullaby
• beloved is called both "living" and "mortal“
• "find the mortal world enough" – that we
should be satisfied with the here and now,
and not look to God for answers
• we should accept the mortality of all life and
rejoice in the meaning that death provides
• not exactly the happiest love poem but has a
realistic outlook on life and death

14. Examples
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral: (3-6)
• speaker's focus on death
• nothing lasts forever
• children grow up and lose their beauty
• everyone dies eventually

15. Examples
But in my arms til break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty but to me
The entirely beautiful. (7-10)
• sleeping beloved as a "living creature”
• won’t be living one day
• the beloved is "mortal”
• reminder that everyone will die some day

16. Examples
Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell, (21-23)
• symbols of time passing – a clock and a bell
• reminds that time is always passing

17. Examples
Beauty, midnight, vision dies; (31)
• nothing lasts forever
• not just human beings die
• beauty doesn't last forever
• ideas are also mortal
• even midnight "dies" every night

18. Examples
Find the mortal world enough (36)
• asks his sleeping beloved to be satisfied with
their earthly life
• the world and their love are enough for both
of them
• no need of a god or supernatural powers

19. Conclusion
• Auden is a realist
• He understands poetry might not directly influence
anything
• He has a habit of calling things by their real names
(the sun, the law, death, love)
• It brings us into a better relationship with reality
• He doesn’t give the readers the fairy-tale like happily-ever-
afters
• He shows them the real picture of life i.e. beautiful
but mortal

20. Thank you
for your time
