Introduction: The English poet Wystan Hugh Auden wrote "Partition" in 1966. Though it
never mentions him by name, the poem describes Cyril Radcliffe: the British lawyer who was
tasked with drawing the boundaries during the 1947 Partition of India, which divided the
country into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. "Partition" was published
in Auden's 1969 collection, City Without Walls. The poem "Partition" by W. H. Auden deals
with the historical event of the partition of the sub-continent into India and Pakistan.
More Information: Around 12 million people displace and millions were left homeless. Cyril
Radcliffe arrived in India on July 8, 1947. This was an epic dimension task but it was done in
such haste, and carelessness that it resulted in a monumental tragedy. Partition along the
Radcliffe Line ended in violence that killed one million people and displaced 12 million.
Radcliffe burnt his papers, refused his Rs 40,000 fee, and left once and for all. It is a political
and historic poem. There was no agreement between the two political parties; Radcliffe set up
the boundaries. The “lines he drew sparked a tragedy that still poisons ties between the
two countries today,” as a BBC report noted in 2017.
Author's details: Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's
poetry is noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals,
love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form, and content. Some of his best known poems are
about love, such as "Funeral Blues"; on political and social themes, such as "September 1,
1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; on cultural and psychological themes, such as The Age of
Anxiety; and on religious themes, such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae".
Auden came to wide public attention in 1930 with his first book, Poems; it was followed in 1932
by The Orators. Three plays written in collaboration with Christopher Isherwood between
1935 and 1938 built his reputation as a left-wing political writer. Auden moved to the United
States partly to escape this reputation, and his work in the 1940s, including the long poems "For
the Time Being" and "The Sea and the Mirror", focused on religious themes. He won the
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his 1947 long poem The Age of Anxiety, the title of which
became a popular phrase describing the modern era. From 1956 to 1961, he was Professor of
Poetry at Oxford; his lectures were popular with students and faculty and served as the basis
for his 1962 prose collection The Dyer's Hand. Auden was much influenced by the poetry of
Thomas Hardy, William Blake, and G. M. Hopkins.
Structure: The first stanza contains twelfth lines. The first stanza follows the rhyme scheme,
“aabbccaddaee.” The second stanza contains ten lines. The rhyme scheme of second stanza is
"aabbccddee." The third stanza shows only thre
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