As i walked out one evening

Analysis of poem As I walked out one evening by W.H AUDEN

1. AS I WALKED OUT ONE EVENING by  w.h auden

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. About poem 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 beautifu l

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. Stanza 1 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. Stanza 2 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. Stanza 3 '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 stree t

8. Stanza 4 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. Stanza 5 '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. Stanza 6 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 ti me.

11. Stanza 7 '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. Stanza 8 '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. Stanza 9 '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. Conti..... (09) 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. Stanza 10 ' 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. Stanza 11 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. STANZA 12 '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. STANZA 13 '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. STANZA 14 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. StanzA 15 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. Conti... (15) • 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 Click to add text

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