In Memory of W. B. Yeats

Section 1 

This section reveals how different this elegy will be from the traditional English pastoral elegy, such as John Milton’s “Lycidas” or Matthew Arnold’s “Thyrisis,” in which the speaker, in the guise of a shepherd, mourns the dead man and all of nature expresses its grief. In contrast, Auden’s speaker does not express sorrow at the death of Yeats, and nature shows no sign of mourning. Indeed, the imagery is predominantly that of the city rather than the country. 

The elegy begins by stating that Yeats “disappeared” (Line 1), rather than died, which suggests that he might go on existing in some other way or place, although in this elegy, unlike its traditional predecessors, the dead man is not received into heaven or some other divine realm. 

The first stanza provides a naturalistic description of the weather on that day. It was just a normal day in late January—cold, dark, and snowy. There is no pathetic fallacy here, in which nature would reveal human-like emotions or feelings. The urban imagery features such unromantic locales as the deserted airports (Line 2) and “public statues” (Line 3) that are covered by snow.