You Choose: Two Versions of “Autumn Song” [by W. H. Auden]

Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last,
Nurses to their graves are gone,
But the prams go rolling on.

Whispering neighbours left and right
Daunt us from our true delight,
Able hands are forced to freeze
Derelict on lonely knees.

Close behind us on our track,
Dead in hundreds cry Alack,
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.

Scrawny through a plundered wood,
Trolls run scolding for their food,
Owl and nightingale are dumb,
And the angel will not come.

Clear, unscaleable, ahead
Rise the Mountains of Instead,
From whose cold cascading streams
None may drink except in dreams.

-- March 1936 

Posted by  Stacey on November 03, 2013 aComments

Auden was not an American poet--and this version of "Autumn Song" is the better one.

Autumn Song

Now the leaves are falling fast,
Nurse's flowers will not last;
Nurses to the graves are gone,
And the prams go rolling on.

Whispering neighbours, left and right,
Pluck us from the real delight;
And the active hands must freeze
Lonely on the separate knees.

Dead in hundreds at the back
Follow wooden in our track,
Arms raised stiffly to reprove
In false attitudes of love.

Starving through the leafless wood
Trolls run scolding for their food;
And the nightingale is dumb,
And the angel will not come.

Cold, impossible, ahead
Lifts the mountain's lovely head
Whose white waterfall could bless
Travellers in their last distress.

Posted by: James Obertino | September 30, 2014 at 03:48 PM

I prefer “able hands”, and “lonely” to “derelict “.
Also, the “thes” in these two lines can be omitted.

Posted by: Annette D'Arcy | October 06, 2018 at 06:59 AM

I, too, vote for "able hands," and I guess "lonely," while not ideal, is superior to "derelict." But I would contest the view that Auden was not an American poet. True, when he wrote this poem he had never been to America. There were two main periods, and there are those who feel that the English Auden of the 1930s is the authentic voice. But he came to America in 1939, settled in New York, wrote a couple of his greatest and most ambitious poems in the US (the Freud elegy, "Sept 1, 1939," "Under Which Lyre). He became a naturalized US citizen (in 1946, I believe). He is nearly as American as St. Louis native T. S. Eliot is English. -- DL

Posted by: The Best American Poetry | October 06, 2018 at 10:10 AM

I feel like the last two lines are much better in the first version. "From whose cold cascading streams None may drink except in dreams." conveys a sense of privation and bleakness that is in line with the rest of poem, and it's a much more powerful ending.

Overall, I feel like there are moments when the first version is better, and other moments in which the second version is better.

Posted by: Valerie Yip | November 29, 2020 at 11:27 AM

"Autumn Song" is a poem that shows Auden at his most British American or the other way around.

Posted by: William Barnes | January 28, 2021 at 10:39 PM

The second of these 2 versions is the one set to music by Benjamin Britten, in his song cycle, "On this Island." Britten and Auden knew each other.

Posted by: Frances Brock | September 10, 2021 at 06:58 AM

from the archive; first posted November 3, 2013

Comments

[Maria]

I look at what endures in both poems. The two paired lines ending in “reprove” and “love” are off rhymes in both versions. It makes the word love stand out & also shows the author’s lament and thus sincere belief in love. Also, autumn is cyclical & seasonal which reveals the nadir and possible hope for future beyond what was lost in WWI.