Winter 1940
Old Series · Volume 2, No. 1

for sigmund freud

When there are so many we shall have to mourn,
When grief has been made so public, and exposed
      To the critique of a whole epoch
      The frailty of our conscience and anguish,

Of whom shall we speak? For every day they die
Among us, those who were doing us some good
      And knew it was never enough but
      Hoped to improve a little by living.

Such was this doctor: still at eighty he wished
To think of our life, from whose unruliness
      So many plausible young futures
      With threats and flattery ask obedience.

But his wish was denied him; he closed his eyes
Upon that last picture common to us all
      Of problems like relatives standing
      Puzzled and jealous about our dying.

For about him at the very end were still
Those he had studied, the nervous and the nights,
      And shades that still waited to enter
      The bright circle of his recognition

Turned elsewhere with their disappointment, as he
Was taken away from his old interest
      To go back to the earth in London,
      An important Jew who died in exile.

Only Hate was happy hoping to augment
His practice, and his shabby clientele
      That think they can be cured by killing
      And covering their gardens with ashes.

They are still alive but in a world he changed
Simply by looking back with no false regrets;
      All he did was to remember
      Like the old and be honest like children.

He wasn’t clever at all; he merely told
The unhappy Present to recite the Past
      Like a poetry lesson till sooner
      Or later it faltered at the line where

Long ago the accusations had begun,
And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged,
      How rich life had been and how silly,
      And was life-forgiven and more humble.

Able to approach the Future as a friend
Without a wardrobe of excuses, without
      A set mask of rectitude or an
      Embarrassing over-familiar gesture.

No wonder the ancient cultures of conceit
In his technique of unsettlement foresaw
      The fall of princes, the collapse of
      Their lucrative patterns of frustration.

If he succeeded, why, the Generalised Life
Would become impossible, the monolith
      Of State be broken and prevented
      The co-operation of avengers.

Of course they called on God; but he went his way
Down among the Lost People like Dante, down
      To the stinking fosse where the injured
      Lead the ugly life of the rejected,

And showed us what evil is: not as we thought
Deeds that must be punished, but our lack of faith,
      Our dishonest mood of denial,
      The concupiscence of the oppressor.

And if something of the autocratic pose,
The parental strictness he distrusted, still
      Clung to his utterance and features,
      It was a protective imitation.

For one who lived among enemies so long;
If often he was wrong and at times absurd,
      To us he is no more a person
      Now, but a whole climate of opinion

Under whom we conduct our differing lives;
Like weather he can only hinder or help;
      The proud can still be proud but find it
      A little harder and the tyrant tries

To make him do but doesn’t care for him much:
He quietly surrounds all our habits of growth;
      He extends, till the tired in even
      The remotest most miserable duchy

Are aware of the change in their bones, and cheered;
And the child unlucky in his little State,
      Some hearth where freedom is excluded,
      A hive whose honey is fear and worry,

Feels calmer and somehow assured of escape:
While as they lie in the grass of our neglect,
      So many long-forgotten objects
      Revealed by his undiscouraged shining

Are restored to us and made precious again;
Games that we thought we must stop as we grew up,
      Little noises we dared not laugh at,
      Faces we made when no one was looking.

But he wishes us more than this: to be free
Is often to be lonely: he would unite
      The unequal moieties fractured
      By our own well-meaning sense of justice

Would restore to the larger the wit and will
The smaller possesses but can only use
      For arid disputes, would give back to
      The son the mother’s richness of feeling.

But he would have us remember most of all
To be enthusiastic over the night,
      Not only for the sense of wonder
      It alone can give, but also

Because it needs our love, For with sad eyes
Its delectable creatures look up and beg
      Us dumbly to as them to follow;
      They are exiles who long for the future

That lies in our power; they too would rejoice
If allowed to serve enlightenment like him,
      Even to bear our cry of ‘Judas’
      As he did and all must bear who serve it.

One rational vice is dumb; over a grave
The Household of impulse mourn one dearly loved:
      Sad is Eros, builder of cities,
      And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.

W.H. AUDEN (1907-1973) was born in York, England. In 1928, Auden published his first book of verse, and his collection Poems, published in 1930, established him as the leading voice of a new generation. Auden moved to the United States in 1939, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. A prolific writer, he was also a playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic. Auden was a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973.

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