“In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W. H. Auden (1940)

Published in From Another Time, the same volume as “Musée des Beaux Arts,” this poem deals with the loss of Yeats. Auden honors the man for his humanity and his artistry. This poem, too, showcases Auden’s versatility and facility with rhymes and style.

“Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by William Carlos Williams (1962)

This poem takes its inspiration from the same Breughel painting. Both poems feature some key elements of the artwork: the farmer, the sea, and the unnoticed fall. Williams’s style focuses on images. It pares away words to expose their truths.

“Channel Firing” by Thomas Hardy (1914)

Hardy was one of Auden’s early influences. This poem was written in May 1914, three months before the beginning of World War I. The dark, ironic, and satiric poem is a conversation between skeletons and God; the skeletons, having heard a loud noise, fear they’ve been awakened for Judgment Day, but God tells them it was only explosions from guns. The poem is filled with a sense of inevitability, given humanity’s apparent inability to break away from violence, war, and suffering.

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