2 WH Auden poems

"I was not what I seemed;
Beyond their busy backs I made a magic
To ride away from a father's imperfect justice,
Take vengeance on the Romans for their grammar,
Usurp the popular earth and blot out for ever
The gross insult of being a mere one among many:
Now, Ariel, I am that I am, your late and lonely master,
Who knows now what magic is: - the power to enchant
That comes from disillusion.  What the books can teach one
Is that most desires end up in stinking ponds,
But have only to learn to sit still and give no orders,
To make you offer us your echo and your mirror;
We have only to believe you, then you dare not lie;
To ask for nothing, and at once from your calm eyes,
With their lucid proof of apprehension and disorder,
All we are not stares back at what we are.

...the ages I had dreamed
About some tremendous journey I was taking,
Sketching imaginary landscapes, chasms and cities,
Cold walls, hot spaces, wild mouths, defeated backs,
Jotting down fictional notes on secrets overheard
In theatres and privies, banks and mountain inns,
And now, in my old age, I wake, and this journey really exists,
And I have actually to take it, inch by inch,
Alone and on foot, without a cent in my pocket,
Through a universe where time is not foreshortened,
No animals talk, and there is neither floating nor flying.

When I am safely home, oceans away in Milan, and
Realise once and for all I shall never see you again,
Over there, maybe, it won't seem quite so dreadful
Not to be interesting any more, but an old man
Just like other old men, with eyes that water
Easily in the wind, and a head that nods in the sunshine,
Forgetful, maladroit, a little grubby,
And to like it.  When the servants settle me into a chair
In some well-sheltered corner of the garden,
And arrange my muffler and rugs, shall I ever be able
To stop myself from telling them what I am doing, -
Sailing alone, out over seventy thousand fathoms - ?
Yet if I speak, I shall sink without a sound
Into unmeaning abysses.  Can I learn to suffer
Without saying something ironic or funny
On suffering?  I never suspected the way of truth
Was a way of silence where affectionate chat
Is but a robbers' ambush and even good music
In shocking taste;  and you, of course, never told me.
If I peg away at it honestly every moment,
And have luck, perhaps by the time death pounces
His stumping question, I shall just be getting to know
The difference between moonshine and daylight...
I see you starting to fidget.  I forgot.  To you
That doesn't matter.  My dear, here comes Gonzalo
With a solemn face to fetch me.  O Ariel, Ariel,
How I shall miss you.  Enjoy your element.  Good-bye."

'Prospero To Ariel', The Sea and The Mirror:  A Commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest

"O ear whose creatures cannot wish to fall,
O calm of spaces unafraid of weight,
Where Sorrow is herself, forgetting all
The gaucheness of her adolescent state,
Where Hope within the altogether strange
From every outworn image is released,
And Dread born whole and normal like a beast
Into a world of truths that never change:
Restore our fallen day;  O re-arrange.

O dear white children casual as birds
Playing among the ruined languages,
So small beside their large confusing words,
So gay against the greater silences
Of dreadful things you did:  O hang the head,
Impetuous child with the tremendous brain,
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain,
Lost innocence who wished your lover dead,
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.

O cry created as the bow of sin
Is drawn across our trembling violin.
O weep, child, weep, O weep away the stain.
O law drummed out by hearts against the still
Long winter of our intellectual will.
That what has been may never be again.
O flute that throbs with the thanksgiving breath
Of convalescents on the shores of death.
O bless the freedom that you never chose.
O trumpets that unguarded children blow
About the fortress of their inner foe.
O wear your tribulation like a rose."

III, Song for St.Cecilia's Day