Musee des Beaux Arts

(pg. 272)
Musee des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

-W. H. Auden (1907-1973)

This poem provides commentary on pain and disaster and the tendencies to overlook it. Two important devices used in this poem by W. H. Auden include irony and allusion. In this poem, the speaker notes how the Old Masters (aka the famous painters of that time) never neglected to show suffering in their paintings, and that they could find it every daily aspect.Then, however, the speaker goes on to neglect pain and suffering himself by describing others who have done it. He does this even more so when he describes Icarus. By doing this, Auden is alluding not only to Pieter Brueghel's famous painting, but also to Greek Mythology. In this myth, Icarus is given a pair of wings made by his uncle Daedalus, and told not to fly too close to the sun or else the wax will melt and the wings would break. Icarus, however, ignores this advice and does it anyway. As one would expect, Icarus ends up plummeting to his death. Brueghel's painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is an illustration of this event, however the central figures in the paintings pay no attention to the disaster occurring as Icarus falls. Icarus, in fact, is only shown as a mere pair of legs splashing in the water. He is not even the focal point of the painting. Because of this, Auden is very successful in alluding to Brueghel's painting to make his point. It is the perfect commentary of ignorance of disaster to go with his own. 

I really like this poem for it's connection to art history. I think it was very effective for Auden to allude to a famous painting because, not only does he supply the reader with a description of the event, but the reader can actually look at and clearly visualize what Auden is trying to describe. I also like the look Auden takes on ignorance of disaster, and how people tend to forget about it unless it directly affects themselves. 

Woman Work

(pg. 271)
200. Woman Work
I’ve got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed 
The garden to weed
I’ve got the shirts to press
The tots to dress
The cane to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about the sick
And the cotton to pick.

Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.

Storm, blow me from here
With your fiercest wind
Let me float across the sky
‘Til I can rest again.

Fall gently, snowflakes
Cover me with white
Cold icy kisses and 
Let me rest tonight.

Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You’re all that I can call my own.
-Maya Angelou (b. 1928)


In this poem, Maya Angelou describes the duties of a hardworking woman and her connection with nature to escape from her work. A significant part of this poem is the rhyme scheme and the rhythm in the first stanza. While the speaker lists all the tasks she has to do, the very basic rhyme scheme emphasizes the amount of work she has. This, along with the lullably-like rhythm, makes the amount of tasks seem never-ending. This structure then quickly changes over once the woman escapes from her work and into nature. Another important part of this poem is the imagery. In the first stanza, the poem is lacking in vivid images, adding to the emphasis of the dullness of the work. However, once the woman finds herself in nature, the images become very powerful. A few examples are "Fall softly, dewdrops," "Cold icy kisses," and "Star shine, moon glow." These images help show how enchanted the woman is by the nature around her, and how much she enjoys the restfulness and escape. 


Overall, I really like this poem. I love the images Maya Angelou provides, and the contrasting structures of the beginning of the poem and the end. To me, the end of this poem can mean two things. The first is that nature is merely an escape for the woman. It is somewhere she can go and relax after a hard day of work. In my second interpretation, the end of the poem is metaphorically describing the woman's death after a tiring life. The dew drops, the storm, and the snowflakes all take the woman peacefully away from life and bring her to a place she is truly happy.