Saturday, November 8, 2014

Lady of the Wood

In W. H. Auden: Juvenalia: Poems, 1922-1928, ed. Katherine Bucknell, pp. 41-42

           My Lady of the Wood
Deep in a woodland dell
Only the leaves may tell
The cottage roof where dwell
          My love and I
Seldom a stranger's face
Comes to that lonely place
Seldom do strange feet trace
          The path nearby. 
There we watch dawn and eve
Snails on the blackberry lead
Wonders beyond belief
           Daily we view
'Oft have I seen her set
Early to know if yet
Bloomed the first violet
           Mantled in blue. 
Lo in the path she walks
Jays cease their chattering talks
Mice drop their barley stalks
           Ants turn to stare
Hawks let their prey go free
Hares they forget to flee
Flowers crane their necks to see
            Her passing there. 
O she is lovelier far
Than yond bright morning star
Purer than moondrops are
            Guileless as they
Eyes like the stories told
Of the green elves of old
While in the firelight gold
            The listeners lay 
Dearer to me than all
To see the laughter fall
Upon her when I call
            Hourly her name
To know the tenderness
Hid in each lock and tress
All the deep lovingness
            I can inflame. 
And when she is not there
I have no need to fear
She will forget me where
            She dwells the while
Out of the hills and trees
Where stirs a passing breeze
Or running water is
            Breaks her warm smile.          
                                                 [1923 or 1924]

When he decided, in 1922, at the tender age of fifteen, that he would become a poet, Auden took to reading deeply in the poets of and, mostly, before his day, and his early poems are often in imitation of the style of one or more of them. Bucknell's collection helpfully includes guesses as to the influences of each poem. Of this one, she writes, "This theme derives from Wordsworth's Lucy poems, though it is common enough that Auden may have found it in one of the late Romantic or Georgian poets that he liked." (p. 41)

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