2. ABOUT POET
Auden was born in 1907 and was raised in
northern England.
Son of a Doctor and a Nurse.
Auden quickly gained a reputation as a
talented poet while still a young man
(publishing his first book at only 26)
•Traveled around to many countries while
writing books
•He visited Germany, Iceland, and China,
Spain, and moved to the United States
•Met his wife Chester Kallman in America
•W. H. Auden was a Chancellor of the
Academy of American Poets from 1954 to
1973
3. First published in the collection Another Time (1940), “As
I Walked Out One Evening” describes an allegorical
conversation between Love and Time as they discuss the
power of love to conquer eternity.
It has the rhythm and sound of a chant or song. In fact,
the poem was first published in 1938 under the title
“Song.”
The poem begins and ends with the poet’s voice, and in
between are the voice of a singing lover and a chorus of
chiming clocks.
The poem is composed in ballad meter, a form that
nineteenth-century American poet Emily Dickinson often
used
It contains fifteen four-line stanzas rhyming abcb
The tone of the poem is calm, the imagery created is beautiful
4. CHANGE IN VOICES
THROUGHOUT THE
POEM The opening stanza and three quarters of
the following for example sees the first
person speaker begin a walk down to the
river.
At the end of the second stanza another
voice, that of the lover, becomes the
second first person speaker.
In the sixth stanza yet another voice
enters the scene, that of the city
clocks, telling the lovers that they cannot
conquer Time.
At the end the original speaker returns,
time having passed, the river, the eternal
river, flowing on.
This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND.
5. The first person speaker sets
off on a walk, the classic
opening line of a folk poem
beginning As I....confirms that
this is a traditional lyric with
strong rhythm and purpose.
That place-name Bristol Street
is an actual street in
Birmingham, UK, where
Auden was raised as a boy.
The crowds on the pavement
(sidewalk) are metaphorically
seen as fields of harvest
wheat.
.
As I walked out one evening,
Walking down Bristol
Street,
The crowds upon the
pavement
Were fields of harvest
wheat.
6. And down by the brimming river
I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
'Love has no ending.
After passing through the
crowd, the speaker arrives at a
“brimming river” where he
hears two lovers talking under
“an arch of the railway.” The
poem becomes a dialogue
which will extend for the rest
of the stanzas, and here the
scenery seems to reflect the
mood of the lovers: the water
in the river rises on its banks,
the arch they stand under
resembles a huge door to a
cathedral or the gates of
heaven. The two perhaps
believe their love will keep
them together forever, since
“Love has no ending.”
7. 'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the
mountain
And the salmon sing in the
street,
The speaker eavesdrops on the
lovers, and for the next several
lines listens to their promises
of eternal devotion. Their
words seem almost absurd.
They conclude that their love
will survive as long as it would
take for China and Africa to
meet or for a river to find its
course over a mountain and
salmon sing in the street
8. I'll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to
dry
And the seven stars go
squawking
Like geese about the
sky.
The surrealism continues.An
ocean is folded like a cloth and
hung up to dry.Again
impossible in the real world
but Oh so easy when you
are in love.
Love, love,love all you need is
love and the imagination is
allowed to run riot, over the
earth and into the cosmos,
there's no limit
9. 'The years shall run like
rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the
world.
Perhaps the most bizarre from
a visual point of view. Years
are moving fast like a
rabbit,not hares and the
singing lover has the flower of
the ages in hand.
What this means that time is
of no comsequence to pure
love.
This whole stanza is most
religious but what we have
here is a person experiencing
real love for the first time and
its effects are
well,fantastic,unreal and
incredible
10. But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
In this particular poem "As I
walked out this evening" "time" is
the third speaker in the poem
Time trying to understand the
lover that you cannot even won
with time so stop underestimate
time
Without knowing about the
future that what will happen to
him and with his loveone he
claims that his love will always
be evergreen till eternity.
So time wants to open his(lovers)
eyes that stop trying to compete
with time you can't conquer from
time.
11. 'In the burrows of the
Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would
kiss.
In this stanza the speaker "time" is giving
an example to lover by narrating a
nightmare
In that particular nightmare justice was
all around
Time is hidden somewhere and noticing
and observing all the scenario
Here "coughs when you kiss" means when
there is some good moment in someone's
life and someone is enjoying that moment
peacefully and happily and neglecting the
time but time is not neglecting him.
After every tragic situation good time will
come because time is just. It done justice
to each and every person.
12. 'In headaches and in worry
Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
To-morrow or to-day
The clocks keep droning on,
and they aren't changing their
tune. Things stay pretty
gloomy.
Time wears us down. With
life's daily hardships as his
tool (headaches and worry),
little by little Time chips away
at us until he gets his way (his
fancy). Sooner or later, the
wheat gets harvested—we die.
Bummer? You bet. The clock-
speaker isn't going to
sugarcoat things for us.
Yes, things are getting
progressively gloomier. This
might be a good time to take a
break and watch a funny cat
video or two.
13. 'Into many a green valley
Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded
dances
And the diver's brilliant bow.
This stanza begins nicely enough. Who
doesn't like a green valley? It's a place
that's lush and full of life. Kind of like
our lovers in a way—blossoming like The
Flower of the Ages.
And now there's snow. Appalling.
We had a nice, warm, vibrant valley, and
now we have a blanket of chilling snow
choking out (killing) all that nice
greenery we were trying to enjoy. And
who do you think is responsible? What
does this chilling blanket of snow
represent? Yup, our old pal Time.
Just in case you weren't sure Time was
at fault, our other buddy, ol' clock-
speaker, names names. He tells us Time
is responsible: "Time breaks the threaded
dances / And the diver's brilliant bow."
Wait. What? What's this threaded dance
thing?
14. Is it that one move Beyonce did at the Super Bowl?
Actually, threaded dance probably refers to traditional dances like
the Maypole Dance. These dances usually represent the coming of
Spring and all that rebirth and fertility stuff that goes along with it.
Time wrecks that, tooWe still have that diver's brilliant bow to deal
with. If you've ever watched a good diver, especially one using a
diving board, you might have noticed the way they go up into the air
and then, just as they bow their bodies and head down into the
drink, it looks like they pause in mid-air. It is almost like, for just a
split-second, they break free from gravity, they escape its force (kind
of like our lovers think they are going to escape Time)—but they
don't, and gravity pulls them down, breaking their "brilliant bow."
Time is in cahoots with gravity here. Time let's you break free for a
few moments, but that's all and then gravity gets to have her way.
15. 'O plunge your hands in water,
Plunge them in up to the
wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
And wonder what you've
missed.
Poet is commanding his lover
to put your hand in water, up
to the wrist, may be it is a
ritual of washing body before
burial. While their hands are
submerged.poet command the
lover to look at themselves in
the mirrored surface of water.
And wonder what you have
missed. The lover until now
had only been looking forward.
Here poet reminds them to
look back and take inventory
of their short lives.
16. The glacier knocks in the
cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup
opens
A lane to the land of the
dead.
In next stanza the image
become more fanciful and
absurd such as glacier
knocking in the cupboard and
desert sighing in the bed. Even
the crack of teacup widens
until we can see the road we
are walking down in life what
is a lane to land of death. Even
a crack of tea can lead a man
to his death if he doesn't
noticed it and it was too late.
17. 'Where the beggars raffle the
banknotes
And the Giant is enchanting
to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a
Roarer,
And Jill goes down on her
back.
In this stanza poet giving an
image of the world,the world of
opposites...a world gone
slightly mad... beggars who
not to have anything,now have
too much cash(banknotes).
Jack the beanstalk climber is
no longer afraid of the
Giant,the Lily white innocent
boy which is taken from the
Old British folk song " O
Green Grow The Rushes O" is
now a drunken.
18. 'O look, look in the mirror,
O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
In the stanza ,the lover is
encouraged to look in the
mirror, to face up to
personal responsibility
and realize that life is
something to be cherished,
to be grateful for despite
being on the outside
looking in.
19. O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked
neighbour
With your crooked heart.'
• In the previous stanza, the
clock-speaker wanted us to look
at ourselves in the mirror. Now,
he wants us to stand at the
window and take a look outside.
• The mirror lets us see a
reflection of ourselves. The
window lets us see the world
outside ourselves. Anyplace we
look, Time wins—hence those
scalding tears.
• The clock-speaker ends by
telling us to embrace Love, even
if it is imperfect (crooked), frail,
and temporary in comparison to
Time. The clock-speaker wants us
to go ahead and love each other
as best we can with our crooked,
mortal, doomed hearts.
20. It was late, late in the evening,
The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their
chiming,
And the deep river ran on
• In the poem's first stanza it
was evening, perhaps sunset.
The poet used "harvest wheat"
to put the golden sunset colour
in our minds. Now the scene is
much darker, as the repetition
of late emphasizes this point.
• The lovers are nowhere to be
found. They are gone in a
literal sense, but also in a
figurative sense, too. Darkness
often represents death.
Darkness has overtaken the
scene. The lovers are gone
from the scene, but they are
also, figuratively, dead.
21. • The clocks are silent, too. They have "ceased their chiming." Time
is no longer being recorded
• The tracking of Time, the counting of minutes and hours, is a
manmade pursuit. Even after no one is left to keep track of it, Time
will run on and on, kind of like a deep, dark, eternal river.
• The poem begins "down by the brimming river," and ends with,
"the deep river ran on." It's no accident that, even as the
poem comes to an end (as the clock-speaker told us everything must)
it ends with the deep river of Time running on and on
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