Free Six Poets by Alan Bennett

finished. His output had been prodigious, and he went on working right until the end in a routine that was every bit as rigid as that of Housman, whom he so briskly diagnosed when he was a young man (‘Deliberately he chose the dry-as-dust, / Kept tears like dirty postcards in a drawer’). But you’re no more likely to find consistency in a writer than you would in a normal human being. Besides, as Auden himself said: ‘At thirty I tried to vex my elders. Past sixty it’s the young whom I hope to bother.’
    I would be hard put to say what a great poet is, but part of it, in Auden’s case, is the obscurity with which I started. If his life has to be divided into two parts, there are great poems in both. Perhaps he was too clever for the English. Bossy and not entirely likeable, when he died his death occasioned less regret than that of Larkin or Betjeman, though he was the greater poet. This would not have concerned him as he was not vain: criticism seldom bothered him nor did he covet praise or money. And though he would have quite liked the Nobel Prize, all he demanded at the finish was punctuality.
    I’ll end with the final part of the poem Auden wrote in memory of another poet, W. B. Yeats, who died in January 1939. The last two lines are inscribed on Auden’s memorial in Westminster Abbey.

from
In Memory of W. B. Yeats
    (d. Jan. 1939)
    Earth, receive an honoured guest:
    William Yeats is laid to rest.
    Let the Irish vessel lie
    Emptied of its poetry.
    Time that is intolerant
    Of the brave and innocent,
    And indifferent in a week
    To a beautiful physique,
    Worships language and forgives
    Everyone by whom it lives;
    Pardons cowardice, conceit,
    Lays its honours at their feet.
    Time that with this strange excuse
    Pardoned Kipling and his views,
    And will pardon Paul Claudel,
    Pardons him for writing well.
    In the nightmare of the dark
    All the dogs of Europe bark,
    And the living nations wait,
    Each sequestered in its hate;
    Intellectual disgrace
    Stares from every human face,
    And the seas of pity lie
    Locked and frozen in each eye.
    Follow, poet, follow right
    To the bottom of the night,
    With your unconstraining voice
    Still persuade us to rejoice;
    With the farming of a verse
    Make a vineyard of the curse,
    Sing of human unsuccess
    In a rapture of distress;
    In the deserts of the heart
    Let the healing fountain start,
    In the prison of his days
    Teach the free man how to praise.

Louis MacNeice

    1907–1963
    Louis MacNeice was born in Belfast the son of a bookish Church of Ireland minister, a bishop-to-be. Academically precocious, he was already writing verse at seven, around the time of his mother’s death. He was educated in England at Sherborne and Marlborough. At Merton College, Oxford, he made the acquaintance of Auden and Spender and published his first book of poems,
Blind Fireworks
(1929). He worked subsequently as a translator, literary critic, playwright, autobiographer, BBC producer and feature writer. In 1941 he was appointed scriptwriter/producer in BBC Radio’s Features Department, where he worked until his death.
Letters from Iceland
(1937) was written in collaboration with Auden. Subsequent collections include
The Earth Compels, Autumn Journal, Plant and Phantom, Springboard, Holes in the Sky
and
Autumn Sequel
. MacNeice published highly acclaimed translations including the
Agamemnon
of Aeschylus (1936) and Goethe’s
Faust
. He scripted more than 150 radio plays, including
The Dark Tower
(1947).
The Burning Perch
, his last volume of poems, appeared shortly before his death in 1963.

Prayer before Birth
    I am not yet born; O hear me.
    Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the club-footed ghoul come near me.
    I am not yet born, console me.
    I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
    with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
    I am not yet born; provide me
    With water to