Analysis on W.H. Auden Lullaby

Micky Wang 402045189

20th Century English Poetry

Journal #7

April 27, 2015

An Analysis on W. H. Auden’s “Lullaby”

Lullaby is supposed to be a song for children to sleep; however, Auden’s lullaby is a poem to sign the mortality of human beings. Death itself is suffused with a sense of eeriness, and the speaker hums the lullaby about death, which makes this poem creepier.

In the first stanza, we figure out the speaker is addressing to his love. Lay your sleeping head, my love/ Human on my faithless arm. The first two lines are full of sweetness. “Faithless” might have duel meanings here. One is to say that the speaker is an atheist, and the other is to say the speaker is not loyal; we may keep reading to figure out which one it takes. The next four lines, if read together, are actually a sentence. Time and fevers burn away/ Individual beauty from/ Thoughtful children, and the grave/ Proves the child ephemeral. When looking at his lover, he sees that his lover ages, and his mind floats back to when his lover was a child, and now what he sees in front of him is the evidence of oldness. The poet is saying that children will end up being in the grave one day, and that humans are mortal, even we were once children with beauty. Death takes away everything. Something cruel like death haunts human beings, [b]ut in my arms till break of day/ Let the living creature lie/ mortal, guilty, but to me/ The entirely beauty. These four lines, the speaker seems to address to someone else rather than his lover. He is saying his lover is mortal and guilty. Why guilty? Does it have to “my faithless arm” in the second line? Does it suggest that their relationship was once betrayed by each other? Despite all these, the speaker still appreciates the entire beauty of his lover.

In the second stanza, the first line: Soul and body have no bounds implies lovers share bodies and souls with each other, seemingly the two lovers tangle together, a sense of extreme sweetness. The syntax for next few lines is a bit complicated; therefore, I reordered the line as Venus sends her grave the vision of supernatural sympathy, universal love and hope to lovers as they lie upon her tolerant enchanted slope in their ordinary swoon. Venus is Goddess of Love. She gives love and hope to the universal lovers, and also her sympathy to them, inferring that she knows the mortality of human beings. I find it difficult to comprehend “her tolerant enchanted slope”. Does “tolerant” links to “faithless” and “guilty”? This is the only way to explain why the poet uses “tolerant” here, implying Venus can tolerate those who are faithless and guilty. What does “enchanted slope” try to suggest to the readers? If lovers lie on this enchanted slop, then they will be able to be inspired by her sympathy, love and hope. Do I interpret it right?