W.H. Auden's poem "As I Walked Out One Evening" exemplifies his engagement with the traditional ballad form during the late 1930s. The piece is a masterful blend of conventional ballad elements and Auden’s unique stylistic choices, creating a nuanced reflection on love, time, and human aspirations. Through simple yet evocative language, the poem explores the tension between idealized love and the harsh realities of life.

Auden's Ballad Form

The poem’s structure is a nod to the classic English and Scottish folk ballad, featuring a variation of alternating tetrameter and trimeter lines. Its rhyme scheme is consistent with traditional ballads, providing a rhythmic and lyrical flow. Auden employs plain diction, a hallmark of the ballad tradition, with most words being monosyllabic, enhancing the poem's accessibility. This simplicity is contrasted by the emotional depth woven into the narrative, using techniques such as repetition and dialogue to enrich the thematic exploration.

Repetition and Irony

Repetitive elements, such as the lover’s repeated promise "I’ll love you" and the third voice’s imperatives like "plunge," "look," and "stand," serve to underscore the poem's emotional core. This repetition, coupled with stark imagery, paints a picture of vibrant love threatened by a corrupt world. Auden’s irony operates on multiple levels, revealing the naïveté of the lovers who fail to foresee the complexities that lie ahead. Furthermore, this irony extends to the audience, challenging their faith in the power of human love against life’s inevitable hardships.

Voices and Dialogue

Dialogue in the poem is unconventional. Only one of the lovers is given a voice, leaving the other’s reaction to the imagination. A third voice, representing time, interjects to counter the lover's vows. This voice, while not directly engaging with the lover, dismisses their declarations with a stark observation: "Life remains a blessing/ Although you cannot bless." This suggests that while love exists, the young lover remains oblivious to its challenges, preoccupied with their own affirmations.

Transitions and Interpretations

The poem's transitions are abrupt yet deliberate. The sudden appearance of time's voice in the sixth stanza shifts the narrative tone, delivering a message devoid of commentary from the author or observer-narrator. This transition from the ominous proclamation to the concluding "late, late in the evening" introduces ambiguity. The fate of the lovers remains uncertain; they vanish from the narrative, leaving the reader to ponder whether they remain together or part separately. The imagery of the "deep river" flowing silently, as the clocks cease their chiming, could be interpreted as a critique of society’s obsession with time, juxtaposed against the timeless flow of nature and the persistent challenge to the lover’s vows posed by passing time.