3. 'In Praise Of Limestone' by WH Auden

'In Praise of Limestone' ends our brief time with Auden, though I think I will return to this challenging, most individual writer. What an extraordinary poem it is — subtle and complex, oblique and ambiguous, fond and humorous, deep and light and serious as ever. Annoying, if you will, because of this. Yet, in its style and diction, clear-minded, clear-headed, clearly expressed. And full of memorable lines and phrases.

A word about context: it was Auden's first visit to Italy with his lifelong friend and sometime lover, Chester Kallman. This was the first poem Auden wrote in Italy. Limestone landscape was a beloved and symbolic landscape of Auden's, an integral geology of his native Yorkshire. Limestone is also a major part of the Mediterranean landscape. It is a soft, porous, sedimentary rock, fluidly forming underground streams and lakes, caves and caverns. 'Gennel' is a Yorkshire dialect word for a narrow alleyway between houses.

But what on earth is this poem all about? I have lots of ideas, but I hope these may emerge in a general discussion about the poem with some of you.

A few of those great lines and phrases:

 . . . Mark these rounded slopes 
With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath, 
A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs 
That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle, 
Each filling a private pool for its fish and carving 
Its own little ravine whose cliffs entertain 
The butterfly and the lizard . . .

Their eyes have never looked into infinite space 
Through the lattice-work of a nomad's comb . . .

'I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing; 
That is how I shall set you free. There is no love; 
There are only the various envies, all of them sad.' 

. . . but when I try to imagine a faultless love 
Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur 
Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.