Discussion Topic
Analyze Auden's poems "Dear, Though the Night is Gone" and "At the Manger," including a stanza-by-stanza breakdown of "At the Manger."
Summary:
W. H. Auden's poem "Dear, Though the Night is Gone" explores themes of love and separation, emphasizing the enduring nature of true affection despite physical absence. "At the Manger" reflects on the nativity scene, with each stanza focusing on different aspects: the humble setting, the adoration of the shepherds, the significance of Christ's birth, and the promise of salvation. The poem juxtaposes earthly humility with divine significance.
Analyze Auden's poems "Dear, Though the Night is Gone" and "At the Manger."
There is a lot that can be said for these two poems, but these short analyses will give you a good start in understanding the literal and figurative meanings.
"Dear, Though the Night is Gone" is a poem about betrayal and a broken heart. The speaker recalls the enjoyable moments spent with their significant other and how they shared intimate moments together. However, the significant other reveals they love someone else. Now, the speaker is left with feelings of guilt, pain, and despair. But upon further analysis, it seems this love connection is not what it appears to be.
The speaker describes a "crowded" room and mentions the idea of multiple beds in stanzas one and two. Does this mean there were multiple people in this room also being intimate, as suggested in the lines where Auden writes: "In pairs on every bed, Arms round each others necks." Is this...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
image symbolic of a type of prostitution, a strip club, or even a brothel? If true, this reflects the speaker's guilt and their reason for leaving at the end of the poem. Could it be that the speaker fell in love with someone in a sexual role and believed it was love when in reality, the service was paid for? It seems the speaker could not separate the sexual act and intimate feelings of love.
We could also read this poem through a figurative lens where others disagreed with their relationship, as they were not literally looking in but watching the relationship unfold. Still, at the end, we find heartbreak when the speaker is told their lover loves someone else. Ultimately, we find the themes of rejection, heartbreak, and intimacy.
"At the Manger" is about Jesus' birth and the existential musings that Mary could have been thinking after giving birth to the son of God. The first stanza is Mary speaking to her newborn son as he sleeps shortly after birth. She seems to believe all she can offer Jesus is fear and tells him to sleep and enjoy these moments of peace while he can.
In the second stanza, she repeatedly tells him to sleep so that he can be far from the anxiety that was bore in her womb. She wonders, "What will the flesh that [she] gave do for [him]" once he is grown because she knows he will face difficulty because of the nature of his birth. It seems she feels regretful and blames herself for all he will encounter.
The poem closes with Mary telling Jesus to dream and how dreams can bridge the gap between Heaven and Earth. But again, her fears shine through because she fears his fate is nothing but Death and sorrow.
It seems this poem reflects the very real fears a mother would have if conceiving a son from the Heavens and not through her husband. Though she seems to have faith in her son and God, she is only human and knows the struggle that she alone bore through her son. Here, we see the themes of regret, uncertainty, judgment, and fear.
Analyze each stanza of Auden's "At the Manger".
The three stanzas of W. H. Auden's "At the Manger" take the familiar trope of a mother singing her baby to sleep and use the lullaby to imagine some of the conflicted thoughts that might have arisen in the mind of the mother of Christ. The first stanza begins with the thought that her eyes endanger his (which may be taken as synecdoche for him) "with their watchfulness." It is not immediately apparent what this means, but Mary soon elaborates: the fear in her eyes can only teach the child to be afraid. He can escape from this cautiousness of love in sleep.
The second stanza elaborates on the same theme. Christ is the son of man as well as the son of God. Mary's gift to him, the human side of his nature, will only tempt him away from the purely divine project of carrying out God's wishes. Mary feels that all the suffering, the tears and anxiety that her son will experience, come from her and will separate him from God.
In the final stanza, Mary exhorts her son to dream: since even humans can dream of heaven, this will bring him closer to God. However, Jesus is not just the human son of God. He is God, part of the Holy Trinity and may therefore already have chosen his fate. Mary reflects on this and on the Sorrowful Way, the Via Dolorosa he is to tread figuratively and literally, from which only dreams provide an escape.
Throughout the poem, the feminine rhymes of a lullaby are mixed with more hard-edged slant rhymes to create and then disrupt a sense of peace. The same effect is created by the final lines of each stanza, each of which concludes the couplet with a full rhyme but a half-line.