Auden's Ear for Yeats (David Yezzi)

Here's a thought I had rereading Yeats's slightly curious and gorgeous-sounding late poem "Long-Legged Fly." I am pasting it below, so you can judge for yourself. If you are game for this miniature experiment in what Christopher Ricks might call allusion (intentional and perhaps un-), read the poem and count how many Auden poems it brings to mind. In other words, it seems to me that something of the music of this poem found its way into a number of Auden poems, about which more in a second. Here's the Yeats poem; find the lines that Auden must have admired most:

That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;
Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand upon his head.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon silence.

That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on that scaffolding resides
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
His hand moves to and fro.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.

Parts of this sound a lot like Auden to me. In the opening ("Our master Caesar is in the tent / Where the maps are spread, / His eyes fixed upon nothing, / A hand upon his head), I hear Auden's "Fall of Rome": "Caesar's double bed is warm". Also: there is in the Auden "civilization" as a subject (as well as the lassitude and concupiscence that have weakened it). In "Quiet the dog" its hard not to hear "Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone" (from "Funeral Blues"); and that line along with the next couple--"tether the pony / To a distant post"--recall for me lines from "Musee des Beaux Arts": "Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse / Scratches its innocent behind on a tree." Now, here's the thing about this last bit: both "Funeral Blues" and "Musee . . ." were (I believe) written first, so who is echoing whom?!

And that's just the first stanza. What about "That girls at puberty may find / The first Adam in their thought, / Shut the door of the Pope's chapel, / Keep those children out." That sounds very Audenesque to me (I haven't pinned down the particular echo yet--maybe the contemporaneous "Roman Wall Blues." Thoughts?). What's Audenesque is at times quite Yeatsian. I mean, I guess I knew it was. Auden's great elegy plays variations in the key of Yeats. Auden's "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" was written in February 1939, the month after Yeats died. Yeats's "Long-Legged Fly" appeared later that same year in Last Poems and Two Plays. 

I guess the common thread here is the two poets' "public voices," the way they both sound when addressing citizens in a public forum (as opposed to their private-love-poem voices).The refrain, by contrast, seems to me pure Yeats: "Like a long-legged fly upon the stream / His mind moves upon silence." I can't quite imagine Auden coming up with that mystical metaphor. Auden was at times, however, a capable tonal chameleon, so perhaps I'm wrong about that. Please let me know of any other echos you might (or might not!) have heard.

Comments

[Luke Hankins]

What strikes me most is an echo I hear in Yeats' poem not of Auden but of Eliot's "Prufrock." Look at the way Yeats rhymes "Michelangelo" with "to and fro," just as Eliot's famous couplet has "come and go" rhyming with "Michelangelo." Thoughts?

[David Yezzi]

Luke, you're right! Clearly this echo-game is a slippery slope. I missed that echo of Eliot, but it's sure there. Thanks!