And the next one, which is a sort
of adolescent poem of a slight disillusionment I suppose.
What I expected was thunder fighting long struggles
with men and climbing.
After continual straining, I should grow strong.
Then the rocks would shake and I rest long.
What I had not foreseen was the gradual day weakening the will,
leaking the brightness of way.
The lack of good to touch, the fading of body and soul,
smoke before wind corrupt and substantial.
The wearing of time and the watching of cripples
pass with limbs shaped like questions in their odd twist.
The power force grief melting the bones with pity,
the sick falling from Earth.
These I could not foresee.
Expecting always some brightness to hold in trust,
some final innocence exempt from dust, that hanging solid
would dangle through all like the created
poem or the faceted crystal.
I think that all through the early 1930s,
there was a feeling of living between two wars.
In fact, I've been reading lots of documents about Auden
lately, and I'm really surprised how much really we
were conscious of the First World War
which after all was only 10 years before
we were at 20 or so, but which seemed tremendously
remote because things had happened 10 years before or 20
do seem very remote more even than quite
remote things in history.
But nevertheless, we were very aware of this,
and I think also we were very aware of the possibility
of another war happening.
I think this possibility became more or less
a certainty about 1933.
But already in 1929, owing to the unemployment
and various sort of disasters, there
was a feeling that civilization was breaking down
and that a very strong feeling of that kind
I mean, quite as strong as people
had about the atom bomb or the h-bomb some years ago.
And this rather sort of overhang us really
who live under the shadow of a war,
what can I do that matters?
My pen stops and my laughter dancing stop or ride to a gap.
How often on the powerful crest of pride
I am shocked with thought that halts the untamed horses
of the blood, the grip on good.
But moving, whimpering, and mating,
bear tunes to death years stuffed
with a realer passions of the Earth beneath this hearth.