practice 1 anaylsis and response formal essay

   Upon analysing Auden, W.H., “Musée des Beaux Arts.”, I found it to be a boring mono-tone poem about suffering, and how suffering effects everyone, but no one is willing to help. The poem is full of split lines adding an abrupt end to each thought. However, the poem has few but strong imagery. 

    Exploring this poem, I found the tone to be very dark, and sad. "About suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place”(Auden line 1-3) Everyone suffers everyone and deals with it differently is the interpretation I got from these lines. And as I read them, it was in a few drab tone due to the subject of suffering.

    Secondly, I found the splitting of the lines “While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood: They never forgot That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course”(Auden Line 4- 10) added a pause to in places with writer wanted the reader to really focus on. Adding emphasis to "they never forgot"(Auden line 9)

    On another note I felt the writer had strong sence of imagery when he wrote the line, "As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.” (Auden Line18-20). You can almost see the painting the writer is looking at in the moment.

    To wrap things up, I felt the poem was mono-tone, and very dry to read. All the way up until the last four lines when everything comes together and you can see, what the writer sees.