As I Walked Out One Evening

As I Walked Out One Evening: Songs, Ballads, Lullabies, Limericks, and Other Light Verse by WH Auden, 204 pages

     I want a form that's large enough to swim in,

          And talk on any subject that I choose,

     From natural scenery to men and women,

          Myself, the arts, the European news:

          And since she's on a holiday, my Muse

     Is out to please, find everything delightful

     And only now and then be mildly spiteful.

As I Walked Out One Evening collects material from moments in Auden's colorful career when he indulged his playful side - something he did frequently.  Not that playfulness excludes profundity.

     The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

          The desert sighs in the bed,

     And the crack in the tea-cup opens

          A lane to the land of the dead.

Or coldly cynical observations.

     When statesmen gravely say - "We must be realistic -"

     The chances are they're weak and therefore pacifistic:

     But when they speak of principles - look out - perhaps

     Their generals are already poring over maps.

Or reflections on the tragedy of life and love.

     The nightingales are sobbing in

          The orchards of our mothers,

     And hearts that we broke long ago

          Have long been breaking others.

Yet it is all delightful, perhaps especially when spiteful.

     Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever,

     And do not listen to those critics ever

     Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books

     Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks,

     As though the Muse preferred her half-wit sons;

     Good poets have a weakness for bad puns.