Answer to Question #187006 in English for mike

Question

Another Time (W.H Auden)

For us like any other fugitive,

Like the numberless flowers that cannot number

And all the beasts that need not remember,

It is today in which we live.

So many try to say Not Now,

So many have forgotten how

To say I Am, and would be

Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace

To a proper flag in a proper place,

Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs

Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.

Just as if time were what they used to will

When it was gifted with possession still,

Just as if they were wrong

In no more wishing to belong.

In addition, address the following points:

1) What is the message conveyed in the poem? (Theme)

2) Is this a happy or a sad poem?

3) What gives it this quality?

4) What made you choose this poem for your presentation?

Answer 1

1.What is the message conveyed in the poem? (Theme)

In the poem ‘Another Time’, the opening line gives us a clue to the poem’s subject. The poem is, first and foremost, about people who fly away from the present moment in search of meaningful allegiances to national or political causes, but who are cheating themselves because the truth is that ‘It is today in which we live.’ However, as the poem continues, the problem is that many people would rather forget the here and now, they ‘try to say Not Now’, attempting to get away from the reality with which their lives, whether they like it or not, are bound up. They have lost their sense of individual purpose and would rather lose themselves in a past that has become irrelevant to the modern age.

2) Is this a happy or a sad poem?

           A sad poem

3) What gives it this quality?

Like many of Auden’s greatest poems, ‘Another Time’ is at once delightfully clear in its language and hauntingly elusive in its meaning.

4) What made you choose this poem for your presentation?

The poem is educative and has a good message towards people who fly away from the present moment in search of meaningful allegiances to national or political causes, but who are cheating themselves because the truth is that ‘It is today in which we live.’