The Poem that I selected for my essay is Musee des Beaux Arts by W.H. Auden, which I think is both beautiful and poignant at the same time. May be this is the reason why it is considered as one of the best works of Auden. At first glance, I thought the poem was basically trying to say how people move on with their own lives, with utter apathy and indifference, despite witnessing great misfortunes of other hapless people.Or, to put it in other words- “life goes on” and “the show must go on”, no matter what happens .A great many catastrophic events have befallen upon mankind in history- plagues, natural disasters, world wars, holocausts and genocides; but it has not stopped the turning of the world. People have still moved on. People who were not so…..unlucky? This poem may be subtly referring to a universal human tendency to act as passive bystanders when other people are going through evil-”…the ploughman/ may have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,/ but for him it was not an important failure; the sun still shone…”
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