What are the main themes in W.H. Auden's poem "Lullaby"?
W.H. Auden's poem "Lullaby" suggests two central themes: the idea of living for the moment and timeless passion. Although the poem is entitled "Lullaby" and alludes to children in the first stanza, Auden's poem is actually a passionate entreaty for his beloved to seize the moment and enjoy the night they may share together. Auden weighs the passage of time's ability to strip beauty in verses three and four, suggesting that "Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty," but the speaker of the poem suggests that the lovers should live in the moment.
Moreover, Auden's poem speaks to a theme of love without boundaries or time. It is a love in which "the soul and body have no bounds" (11). Later in the last stanza, Auden seems to slow down time, metaphorically using the times of day to represent lasting images of how love should remain throughout life;...
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from "the winds of dawn" to "noons of dryness," Auden's vision of love endures (37, 39).
What are the metaphors in W.H. Auden's "Lullaby" and what do they mean?
A metaphor is a comparison of two unalike things, where the poet says that one thing is another; metaphors lack literal meaning but have figurative meaning (unlike symbols, which have both literal and figurative meanings). In the first stanza, the narrator says that
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children . . .
The speaker makes the claim that, eventually, aging and illness and death come for us all, that our youth and beauty simply cannot last forever. However time does not actually "burn," and neither, literally, do fevers (though they are hot). Here, time is being compared to something that does burn, like fire, a fire that destroys everything lovely in its path without feeling or remorse.
Then, in the second stanza, the narrator says,
Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy . . .
Here—in a somewhat less obvious metaphor—the speaker appears to compare the boundless feeling of being in love, or in such a loving "swoon," to lying upon the breast of Venus, the Roman goddess of love ("Her tolerant enchanted slope").
Auden uses several metaphors throughout the poem, most particularly to imbue the sense of time in "Lullaby" with deeper meaning and purpose in the last stanza. The "winds of dawn" offer the illusion of a fresh clean start, whereas later when the time shifts to the afternoon, Auden's diction hardens to show a more stringent reality. Auden uses the metaphor "noons of dryness see you fed, By the involuntary powers" to convey a time of difficulty in life (37). The word 'dryness' summons the image of a drought or desert; Auden creates a metaphor both unforgiving and harsh.
Later in the same stanza, Auden closes the metaphorical day, by referencing night--
"Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love" (39-40)
Auden's use of the metaphorical day in his poem "Lullaby" reinforces his theme of timeless love; "the nights of insult" pass his beloved by, ending the poem with a secure, comfortable resonance.