A remarkable feature of W. H. Auden’s “Canzone” is that instead of a rime scheme each line ends with one of the following words: day, love, know, will, world.
First Duodectain: “When shall we learn, what should be clear as day”
The first two lines state a claim that is framed, however, as a question; the speaker insists that humans should know, because it so obvious, that “we cannot choose what we are free to love.” He then supplies a conundrum: we might extinguish a small annoyance such as a tiny mouse from our home, but then before we know it, a more significant one threatens us. The “mouse” transforms into a “rhinoceros.”
A conglomerate of tribulations align to confront us as “faces, orations, battles bait our will”; we experience “resentments every day,” but more urgently and more problematic is the fact that “wild men” “rule the absent-minded and this world.”
Second Duodectain: “We are created from and with the world”
The speaker becomes quite philosophical, remarking ontologically, “We are created from and with the world / To suffer with and from it day by day.” He insists that we are “required to love / All homeless objects that require a world.”
Of course, everything “requires” a world and the speaker asserts that whether the subject is the physical level or “a dream world,” the requirement to love operates as a guiding principle. He insists that our attachment to delusion drives our mistakes and thus we know only “panic and caprice.”
The speaker considers how “our dreadful appetite demands a world” that will satisfy not only that “appetite” but also the liquid nature of “our will.”
Third Duodectain: “Drift, Autumn, drift; fall, colours, where you will”
The third duodectain focuses on human will employing “Autumn” as a metaphor for the stage of human life when one’s harvests are being readied. Through “bald melancholia” we experience “regret, cold oceans, the lymphatic will.” Through violence and drink, many exert their will and find no “triumph” but instead “utter hesitation.”
Often, the human-deluded minds learn that “What we love / Ourselves for is our power not to love.” But eventually, human beings must take responsibility if only for the fact of their evolutionary station, for the human always knows what “hyaenas cannot know.”
Fourth Duodectain: “If in this dark now I less often know”
The speaker enters the poem as an individual for the first time in this stanza. In the first through third duodectains, he has created a murky “world” filled with delusive human beings acting irrationally out of ignorance and selfishness.
The speaker addresses his belovèd, essentially stating, but again framing it as a question, that his belovèd is well aware of his lack of ultimate understanding. He emotes, “who should know / Better than you, belovèd, how I know / What gives security to any world.”
Yet he does come to a clear realization when he avers, “In my own person I am forced to know /
How much must be forgotten out of love, / How much must be forgiven, even love.” The importance of love and will cannot be overstated, and the speaker frames his understanding in almost epic terms.
Fifth Duodectain: “Dear flesh, dear mind, dear spirit, O dear love”
Addressing representatives of each of the three worlds--“Dear flesh, dear mind, dear spirit, O dear love”—physical, mental, spiritual, as well as his beloved, the speaker reveals his dramatic peroration. While “blind monsters” of physical desires try to usurp the higher, moral mind and soul, and cause him the indignity of “dreading Love / That asks its image for more than Love,” his will becomes hostage to “hot rampageous horses.”
But the speaker knows, “Love / Gives no excuse to evil done for love.” And he insists that this principle operates on all levels of existence. Thus he offers a prayer for his fellow human being: “Dear fellow-creature, praise our God of Love / That we are so admonished, that no day / Of conscious trial be a wasted day.” This speaker is grateful for living holy scripture that offers guidance for abiding in this hostile world.
Final Cinquain: “Or else we make a scarecrow of the day”
The final cinquain avers that duality is real, that, “There must be sorrow if there can be love.” But this knowledge should not be used to “make a scarecrow of the day.” If we fail to employ the power of the will to love divinely, we make “stuff and nonsense of our own free will.”
Commentary
The poem is interestingly titled, “Canzone,” which means “song” in Italian. The sentiment of the piece is, indeed, the stuff of song, yet its execution more resembles a philosophical treatise or essay. But with this piece as well as with many other poems, Auden’s facility with fashioning a poem from non-poetic material creates many memorable lines that will remain with many readers for a lifetime.
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