September 1, 1939
A speaker sits in one of the dives on Fifty-Second Street, uncertain and afraid as the clever hopes expire of a low dishonest decade and waves of anger and fear circulate over the darkened lands of the earth. The stanzas run from what scholars can unearth about Linz, through the lie of authority, to the ironic points of light wherever the just exchange their messages. Auden cut its most quoted line from later printings and eventually disowned it.
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- 60% · 8 shared
- 56% · 9 shared