Introduction: Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a
British-American poet. "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" is W. H. Auden's complicated tribute to
William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), considered the foremost Irish poet of his age and one of the
finest writers in the English language. Throughout the poem, Auden weighs the complexities of
Yeats's legacy, including his tremendous literary "gift" and his sometimes "silly" or foolish ideas.
More broadly, he contemplates the poet's role in society, particularly during "nightmar[ish]"
periods of history—like the eve of World War II, when Auden wrote the poem. The poem dates
to February 1939, the month after Yeats's death, and appears in Auden's collection, "Another
Time" (1940). It remains one of the most famous poetic elegies of the 20th century. The first part
speaks on the loss and how it impacted and didn’t impact, the world. The second section of ‘In
Memory of W.B. Yeats’ is directed, through a second person speaker, to Yeats himself. While
the third is an elegy meant to sum up that which was spoken about previously but also make
new statements about what poetry can do for humankind, especially in the face of WWII.
Structure: The first part of the poem contains six stanzas, the second: one, and the third: six
again. Auden does not make use of a rhyme scheme in the first two parts of the poem but in
the third he does. This makes sense considering the elegiac form of these last lines. They
rhyme in a pattern of AABB CCDD, and so on, changing end sounds as he saw fit.
More Information: The final section alludes to the tragedies of the Second World War that was
brewing in 1939 when Yeats died. Traditionally an elegy includes three stages of loss: the first is
an expression of grief; the
second is full of praise for the deceased person; the third contains consolation and
solace. In the written time, The Great Depression that shook America in 1929 hit England
soon after. Auden and his contemporaries saw, not a metaphorical
wasteland of Eliot but a more literal wasteland of poverty, industrial stagnation and
mass unemployment.
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