hi, i was wondering if anyone could help me analyse the following poems by WH Auden:

Spain
A Communist to Others

here is Spain:

Yesterday all the past. The language of size
Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion
Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;
Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards,
The divination of water; yesterday the invention
Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of
Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants,
The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley.
The chapel built in the forest;
Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles.

The trial of heretics among the columns of stone;
Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns
And the miraculous cure at the fountain;
Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines,
The construction of railways in the colonial desert;
Yesterday the classic lecture
On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greece,
The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero;
Yesterday the prayer to the sunset
And the adoration of madmen. But to-day the struggle.

As the poet whispers, startled among the pines,
Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright
On the crag by the leaning tower:
‘Oh my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor.’

And the investigator peers through his instruments
At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus
Or enormous Jupiter finished:
‘But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire.’

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets
Of the evening paper: ‘Our day is our loss, O show us
History the operator, the
Organiser, Time the refreshing river.’

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life
That shapes the individual belly and orders
The private nocturnal terror;
‘Did you not found the city state of the sponge,

‘Raise the vast military empires of the shark
And the tiger, establish the robin’s plucky canton?
Intervene. O descend as a dove or
A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend.’

And the life, if it answers at all , replies from the heart
And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and squares of the city:
‘O no, I am not the mover;
Not to-day; not to you. To you, I’m the

‘Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily -duped;
I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be
Good, your humorous story.
I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

‘What’s your proposal? To build the just city? I will.
I agree. Or is it the suicide pact the romantic
Death? Very well, I accept, for
I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain.’

Many have heard it on remote peninsulas,
On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fisherman’s islands
Or in the corrupt heart of the city,
Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

They clung like burrs to the long expresses the lurch
Through the unjust lands, thorough the night, through the alpine tunnel;
They floated over the oceans;
They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot
Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe;
On that tableland scored by rivers,
Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond
To the medicine ad. And the brochure of winter cruises
Have become invading battalions;
And our faces, the institute-face, the chain -store, the ruin

Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb.
Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom
As the ambulance and the sandbag;
Our hours of friendship into a people’s army.

To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue
And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the
Octaves of radiation;
To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing.

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic lover,
The photographing of ravens; all the fun under
Liberty’s masterful shadow;
To-morrow the hours of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome;
To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers,
The eager election of chairmen
By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.

To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs,
The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion;
To-morrow the bicycle races
Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death,
The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder;
To-day the expending of powers
On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette,
The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scarping concert,
The masculine jokes; to-day the
Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look.
We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and
History to the defeated
May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

please help as i havent a clue where to start! If i find the other poem on the net i'll post it here aswell!

Thanx!

Needs more verbs. Whaddya mean by "analyze"? Formal structure or message?

Tijen, you might see if you can get a copy of this book at your college library:

[216.239.53.104]


Les

hi, i need help analysing both the structure and message

Well, he certainly seems to be comparing the Spain of today (at the time he wrote it - say, 1940 or so) to what it was in the past.

An oft-repeated line is [...] but to-day the struggle.

So, that would appear to be the gist of his message.

The form could very well be one from the distant past. Someone posted an example of one of Auden's works in accentual asclepiads a while back. Auden knew everything there was to know about poetry, but I am not personally familiar with such a form, if indeed that is what he is doing here.

Working my way through the lines, I have some confidence that he intends it to be read with five feet in lines 1, 2 and 4, with three feet in line 3. There are no rhymes, and has the feel of blank verse, with the three feet substitution in the third line of each stanza. Mostly iambic and anapestic meters, freely mixed throughout, as are both end-stopped lines and enjambments.

Did you ever locate the other poem? There might be a relationship or pattern to be discerned from that as well.

I have to wonder about the title as well. 'A communist to others' seems to beg the ending- 'but ______ to themselves.'

pam

W. H. AUDEN

A COMMUNIST TO OTHERS
COMRADES who when the sirens roar
From office shop and factory pour
'Neath evening sky;
By cops directed to the fug
Of talkie-houses for a drug
Or down canals to find a hug
Until you die:

We know, remember, what it is
That keeps you celebrating this
Sad ceremonial;
We know the terrifying brink
From which in dreams you nightly shrink
"I shall be sacked without," you think,
"A testimonial."

We cannot put on airs with you
The fears that hurt you hurt us too
Only we say
That like all nightmares these are fake
If you would help us we could make
Our eyes to open, and awake
Shall find night day.

On you our interests are set
Your sorrow we shall not forget
While we consider





there ya go bro.

sorry, left out the last 3 lines. they are:


Those who in every county town
For centuries have done you brown,
But you shall see them tumble...




good luck, but seems i'm a bit late

i'm sorry again. those last 3 lines might be to a different poem. i dont know if the next page continued the poem, or listed an untitled one.