Analysis Of W. H. Auden's Lullaby
This essay will be a commentary on the language of love used in Lullaby by W. H. Auden. Through analysis of images such as time, childhood, mortality, the grave and the cost of love it will be seen that the language used by Auden in Lullaby is pessimistic as well as depressing. It will be seen that the language used by Auden is vastly different to the stereotypical language used in love poems. Lullaby veers from the stereotypical approach to love and instead displays the speakers individual impression of love in the language used and the images described.
Lullaby by W. H. Auden consists of 4 stanzas of 10 lines each. There is no particular rhyme pattern although each stanzas line 3 and line 7 rhyme. The poem is a trochaic tetrameter poem.
The poem begins with the image of time and sickness detracting from the image of the beauty of childhood in the same stanza. It is due to age (“time”( line 3)) and sickness (“fever”( line 3)) that childhood is “ephemeral”(line 6), lasting only for a short time. This image sets the tone of the poem. The poet uses childhood as a metaphor for his relationship leading the reader to believe that the relationship is young, new and still holds the beauty of discovery. Although the speaker does not want his lover’s beauty to be diminished through time nor sickness, he realizes it is inevitable as age cannot be stopped nor sickness completely avoided.
Time is used throughout the poem to display the coming to the end of something. “Certainty,
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