R E A D I N G P O E T R Y

LESSON 17: THE ODE—‘ODE TO THE MEDIEVAL POETS’ BY W.H.

AUDEN

Read the poem and note down your thoughts on it before proceeding to the analysis.

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Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your

brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage,

without anaesthetics or plumbing,

in daily peril from witches, warlocks,

lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries

burning as they came, to write so cheerfully,

with no grimaces or self-pathos?

Long-winded you could be but not vulgar,

bawdy but not grubby, your raucous flytings

sheer high-spirited fun, whereas our makers,

beset by every creature comfort,

immune, they believe, to all superstitions,

even at their best are so often morose or

kinky, petrified by their gorgon egos.

We all ask, but I doubt if anyone

can really say why all age-groups should find our

Age quite so repulsive. Without its heartless

engines, though, you could not tenant by book-shelves,

on hand to delect my ear and chuckle

my sad flesh: I would gladly just now be

turning out verses to applaud a thundery

jovial June when the judas-tree is in blossom,

but am forbidden by the knowledge

that you would have wrought them so much better.

ANALYSIS

Have you spent some time thinking about this poem? If not, go back and do so before you

read on.

An ode is a poem that is addressed to someone or something, and some of the greatest

poems in the English language are odes. In this poem, Auden addresses the Medieval poets.

In doing so, he identifies a literary tradition in a way that is similar to what Ginsberg does

in his poem on Whitman.

Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunbar, with all your

brother Anons, how on earth did you ever manage,

without anaesthetics or plumbing,

in daily peril from witches, warlocks,

In the opening stanza, the poet refers not only to the great poets of the Medieval era but

also to all the poets of the time who wrote anonymously. (This group could include female

writers who were unable to publicly share their work under their own names.)

lepers, The Holy Office, foreign mercenaries

burning as they came, to write so cheerfully,

with no grimaces or self-pathos?

Long-winded you could be but not vulgar,

Since the stanzas run into each other, it is difficult to separate the meaning of one stanza

from the next. The tone of these lines is a little playful, as the poet apparently suggests that

fanciful creatures such as witches and warlocks were actually real at the time.

bawdy but not grubby, your raucous flytings

sheer high-spirited fun, whereas our makers,

beset by every creature comfort,

immune, they believe, to all superstitions,

even at their best are so often morose or

kinky, petrified by their gorgon egos.

We all ask, but I doubt if anyone

can really say why all age-groups should find our

Age quite so repulsive. Without its heartless

engines, though, you could not tenant by book-shelves,

on hand to delect my ear and chuckle

my sad flesh: I would gladly just now be

turning out verses to applaud a thundery

jovial June when the judas-tree is in blossom,

but am forbidden by the knowledge

that you would have wrought them so much better

What Auden consistently does in this poem is compare his time to the Medieval era. There

are several contrasts to be noted here: did you spot them all? One of the fundamental ideas

here is that we often tend to see the Medieval era as a time in which superstitions were

rampant, a ‘simpler’ time in which people believed in irrational things. Auden, however,

favours the Medieval era over his own “repulsive” time.

Auden also says that he believes that the Medieval poets would have been “so much better”

at writing poems about the topics that he wants to write about. Note the reference to

mythology in “Jove” and the deliberate use of the word “judas,” which is used in a

seemingly innocuous reference here but also alludes to the Biblical Judas, known for his

betrayal of Christ.

He also points out that without the “heartless engines” of his time, he would not have

access to works by Medieval poets. Like many poems, this one has an underlying meaning

that sometimes appears to be at odds with the more ‘obvious’ meaning of the poem. The

underlying paradox in the poem seems to indicate that although the speaker appears to

favour a bygone era over his own, he also acknowledges, perhaps through the very act of

writing his poem, that poetry can still be written effectively in his own time.