Language   

The Shield of Achilles

W.H. Auden
Language: English


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.‎



Main Page

Please report any error in lyrics or commentaries to antiwarsongs@gmail.com

Note for non-Italian users: Sorry, though the interface of this website is translated into English, most commentaries and biographies are in Italian and/or in other languages like French, German, Spanish, Russian etc.




hosted by inventati.org