As I Walked Out One Evening

As I Walked Out One Evening 

By W. H. Auden

 

As I walked out one evening,

   Walking down Bristol Street,

The crowds upon the pavement

   Were fields of harvest wheat.

 

And down by the brimming river

   I heard a lover sing

Under an arch of the railway:

   ‘Love has no ending.

 

‘I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you

   Till China and Africa meet,

And the river jumps over the mountain

   And the salmon sing in the street,

 

‘I’ll love you till the ocean

   Is folded and hung up to dry

And the seven stars go squawking

   Like geese about the sky.

 

‘The years shall run like rabbits,

   For in my arms I hold

The Flower of the Ages,

   And the first love of the world.’

 

But all the clocks in the city

   Began to whirr and chime:

‘O let not Time deceive you,

   You cannot conquer Time.

 

‘In the burrows of the Nightmare

   Where Justice naked is,

Time watches from the shadow

   And coughs when you would kiss.

 

‘In headaches and in worry

   Vaguely life leaks away,

And Time will have his fancy

   To-morrow or to-day.

 

‘Into many a green valley

   Drifts the appalling snow;

Time breaks the threaded dances

   And the diver’s brilliant bow.

 

‘O plunge your hands in water,

   Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

   And wonder what you’ve missed.

 

‘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.

 

‘Where the beggars raffle the banknotes

   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,

And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,

   And Jill goes down on her back.

 

‘O look, look in the mirror,

   O look in your distress:

Life remains a blessing

   Although you cannot bless.

 

‘O stand, stand at the window

   As the tears scald and start;

You shall love your crooked neighbour

   With your crooked heart.’

 

It was late, late in the evening,

   The lovers they were gone;

The clocks had ceased their chiming,

   And the deep river ran on.

 

About the Poem

 

"As I Walked Out One Evening" is a rhyming ballad, originally titled “Song” when it was first published in the New Statesman and Nation magazine in January 1938. It was later also published in Auden's book Another Time in 1940, with its now familiar longer title.

 

This poem has been set to music by various composers over time, the short rhythmic lines making ideal lyrics. I tried to find some of these compositions, but only found one by the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, but trust me, I will not put you through that. 

 

Auden's technical talents allowed him to produce a vast range of poetic forms, from traditional ballads like this one to groundbreaking epics. His interests were broad—from politics to spirituality, history to societal influences, and always the concern for the individual's role in the bigger scheme of things. “As I Walked Out One Evening” focuses on the idea that love, represented by a pair of lovers the speaker overhears, is subject to time, expressed through the chimes of the city clocks.

 

The main theme is mortality. Humans, with all their intimate relationships, with their idealistic and foolish notions of love, cannot avoid or evade the consequences of time, no matter what they say or feel. Time cannot be deceived. What is fascinating about this poem is the way Auden has used different voices to explore this subject. The opening stanza and three quarters of the following, for example, see the first-person speaker begin a walk down to the river. At the end of the second stanza another voice, that of the lover, becomes the second first-person speaker. In the sixth stanza yet another voice enters the scene, that of the city clocks, telling the lovers that they cannot conquer Time. At the end of the poem, the original speaker returns.

 

Auden wrote the poem in 1937, published it in 1938, and again in 1940. It reflects the anxiety he had about his own relationships in life and was one of a number of poems that were created around the time of the Second World War and all the uncertainty surrounding the future of the West.

 

About the Poet

 

Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907. He moved to Birmingham during childhood and was educated at Christ Church, Oxford. As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. At Oxford, his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender, and Christopher Isherwood.

 

In 1928, Auden’s collection, Poems, was privately printed, but it wasn’t until 1930, when another collection titled Poems (though its contents were different) was published, that Auden was established as the leading voice of a new generation.

 

Ever since, Auden has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form; the incorporation in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech; and also, for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information. He had a remarkable wit, and often mimicked the writing styles of other poets such as Dickinson, W. B. Yeats, and Henry James. His poetry frequently recounts, literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest, and his travels provided rich material for his verse.

 

Auden visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil War, and, in 1939, moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. His own beliefs changed radically between his youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic.

 

W. H. Auden served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973, and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.