Audens poem begins with the first sights the tourist in the capital is likely to see,
the fashionable center where it seems as though the rich have nothing better to do than lounge
in cafes and wait expensively for miracles. The artificiality of the capital is emphasized
further in the second stanza. It has abolished the seasons and banished the natural rhythm of
life.
The reality of the city, its day to day existence, is in disposable
lives and the constant harshness of life which, in one of the poems most arresting images,
batters people into conformity as the sea batters pebbles into smooth shapes. In the end,
however, it is the illusion, not the harsh reality, which illuminates the sky, drawing in the
farmers children with the promise of a more exciting, brilliant life.
The
poem is unrhymed and written in loose alexandrines, slightly longer and less regular than the
iambic pentameter usually employed forin English. The language is emotive
("malicious,"...
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