January 07, 2017
Lullaby is a soothing song intended to lull a child to sleep. In the poem "Lullaby" by W. H. Auden, two crucial subjects were placed side-by-side; love and lullaby.
With the notion of the poem, lullaby is the best way to love which surpassed outward appreciation, nighttime sensual moments and cohabitational responsibilities. Auden saw no certainty in other things than lullaby.
He believed that time and sickness destroy youthfulness and its accompanied hopefulness through aging and dying; that's why the night his lover lie on his arms was worth everything to him.
Auden accepted the strong emotionality within romantic ecstasy but failed to attach importance to such ecstasy because it was gravy. Such ecstasy leads to other things like parenting:
"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 abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's sensual ecstasy."
In stanza 3, Auden explained that although lovemaking as a means of quenching the cry of boredom, only last a very short period of time "like vibrations
of a bell" but nothing will deny him such moment with his lover; not even the scary future.
In the last stanza of the poem, Auden re-ascertained that "Beauty, midnight, vision dies" but that night spent together with his lover will serve as substitution for other things:
"Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find your mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love."
"Lullaby" is a 40 line poem divided into 10 lines per stanza. The setting of poem is nighttime and the poem can be categorized under love and life. Love is the central theme of the poem but other themes such as death, growth, beauty, surfaced.
There are no planned end rhyme scheme though the title suggested a song. The tone is sweet and wooing with the multiple use of images of sight. Other poetic devices in the poem are alliteration in line 15 and 16 respectively "vision Venus sends" and "supernatural sympathy" then simile in line 23 "Like vibrations of a bell" then metonymy in line "fevers" which was used to replace sicknesses then litotes in line "swoon" which was used by Auden to undermine love.
"All the dreaded cards foretell" even though Auden mentioned "faithless" in line 2, this show that the poet related with soothsayers to a certain extent.
Wystan Hugh Auden commonly called W. H. Auden was an English poet born 21th February, 1907. He later nationalized to an American citizen but departed earth on 29th September, 1973 at the age of 66.
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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)
