By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Lullaby’ is a poem by the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-73). It was published in 1937, when Auden was still living in England (he would depart for the United States in early 1939). The poem is an example of a love poem, but there are a number of things worth noting about it, which we’ll come to in the analysis of ‘Lullaby’ below.
You can read the poem here.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Its title echoing the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, ‘The Unknown Citizen’ is a poem that demonstrates W. H. Auden’s fine ability to fuse irony and wit with pathos and pity. Written in 1939, the poem was one of the first Auden wrote after he moved from Britain to the United States.
You can read ‘The Unknown Citizen’ here before proceeding to our analysis below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The More Loving One’ is one of W. H. Auden’s most popular post-1930s poems. At once a celebration of unrequited love and a metaphysical poem about the difficulty of finding ‘love’ and meaning in a secular age, it is a straightforward poem that, like much of Auden’s poetry, conceals more complex meanings beneath the surface.
You can read ‘The More Loving One’ here before proceeding to our analysis of the poem below.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Another Time’ is a poem, initially untitled when it was first published in 1940, by the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-73). Like many of Auden’s greatest poems, ‘Another Time’ is at once disarmingly clear in its language and hauntingly elusive in its meaning. Before we offer some words of analysis, it might help to read the poem, which is available here.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘If I Could Tell You’ is a poem by the Anglo-American poet W. H. Auden (1907-73), who was born in York and made his name as the foremost English poet of the 1930s, before emigrating to the United States (where he would live on and off for much of the rest of his life) towards the end of the decade.