Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly
Deftly, Admiral, Cast Your Fly - meaning Summary
Admiral Confronting Obsolescence
The poem addresses an aging admiral and ambassador whose past authority, pleasures, and mastery are now powerless before younger passions and inevitable decline. Auden stages small, domestic scenes—a fisherman’s cast, a reader absorbed, a couple embracing—to show how former glories and strategic skill cannot reclaim influence or stop fate. The tone is elegiac and resigned, emphasizing loss, displacement, and the finality of time over personal agency.
Read Complete AnalysesDeftly, admiral, cast your fly Into the slow deep hover, Till the wise old trout mistake and die; Salt are the deeps that cover The glittering fleets you led, White is your head. Read on, ambassador, engrossed In your favourite Stendhal; The Outer Provinces are lost, Unshaven horsemen swill The great wines of the Chateaux Where you danced long ago. Do not turn, do not lift your eyes Toward the still pair standing On the bridge between your properties, Indifferent to your minding: In its glory, in its power, This is their hour. Nothing your strength, your skill, could do Can alter their embrace Or dispersuade the Furies who At the appointed place With claw and dreadful brow Wait for them now.
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