The Shield of Achilles W. H. Auden
She looked over his shoulder
For vines and olive trees,
Marble well-governed cities
And ships upon untamed seas,
But there on the shining metal
His hands had put instead
An artificial wilderness
And a sky like lead.
A plain without a feature, bare and brown,
No blade of grass, no sign of neighborhood,
Nothing to eat and nowhere to sit down,
Yet, congregated on its blankness, stood
An unintelligible multitude,
A million eyes, a million boots in line,
Without expression, waiting for a sign.
Out of the air a voice without a face
Proved by statistics that some cause was just
In tones as dry and level as the place:
No one was cheered and nothing was discussed;
Column by column in a cloud of dust
They marched away enduring a belief
Whose logic brought them, somewhere else, to grief.
She looked over his shoulder
For ritual pieties,
White flower-garlanded heifers,
Libation and sacrifice,
But there on the shining metal
Where the altar should have been,
She saw by his flickering forge-light
Quite another scene.
Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot
Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke)
And sentries sweated for the day was hot:
A crowd of ordinary decent folk
Watched from without and neither moved nor spoke
As three pale figures were led forth and bound
To three posts driven upright in the ground.
The mass and majesty of this world, all
That carries weight and always weighs the same
Lay in the hands of others; they were small
And could not hope for help and no help came:
What their foes like to do was done, their shame
Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride
And died as men before their bodies died.
She looked over his shoulder
For athletes at their games,
Men and women in a dance
Moving their sweet limbs
Quick, quick, to music,
But there on the shining shield
His hands had set no dancing-floor
But a weed-choked field.
A ragged urchin, aimless and alone,
Loitered about that vacancy; a bird
Flew up to safety from his well-aimed stone:
That girls are raped, that two boys knife a third,
Were axioms to him, who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.
The thin-lipped armorer,
Hephaestos, hobbled away,
Thetis of the shining breasts
Cried out in dismay
At what the god had wrought
To please her son, the strong
Iron-hearted man-slaying Achilles
Who would not live long.
The poem, “The Shield of Achilles,” acts as an eponym for a book of poetry written by W.H. Auden. This fact alone might indicate the strength and importance that Auden ascribes to the poem. Not unlike a warrior’s shield, on the cover of the book, “The Shield of Achilles” is thrust forward and serves as a barrier that the reader must confront.
The first section of the book is a series of celebratory bucolics. The above poem appears immediately after and presents a strong contrast. The poem expands on a moment from Homer’s “The Iliad.” Specifically, Thetis, the mother of the legendary warrior Achilles, watches as the god Hephaestos forges a shield for her son. The poem describes the shield itself, but also the mother’s reaction to the image upon the armor.
The strophes that address the perspective and hopes of Thetis all begin with “she looked over his shoulder.” Stylistically, the strophes’ line length is shorter than the ekphrastic stanzas, and it is also composed in unrhymed verse. The form of these passages serves to mirror the apparent triviality of Thetis’s expectations concerning her son’s battle career.
Whereas Thetis anticipates glory, beauty, and frivolity, Hephaestos forges a more militaristic and bleak image. The rhyme of these stanzas, (ababbcc), insists on something that is carefully formed, but the imperfect meter suggests disinterest in beauty. The characteristics of Hephaestos and the shield he is making conflict with Thetis as an observer.
The tension in this poem comes from the ugliness of a mother ignorantly damning her son death, while the armorer, aware of the nature of battle, creates a product that is both functional and honest. Of the two, it is the armorer who is more protective of Achilles.
This brief look at the poem suggests a single agenda of disillusionment regarding the romance of war. This poem is also entirely valid on an imagistic level, and there is something to be said for the poet’s awareness of his own craft. Auden displays a talent that invites numerous appraisals and interpretations.
- Joseph Fritsch
Source :
http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15547
Image Source:
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/images/auden2.jpg
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