Wystan Hugh Auden

Eyes Look Into the Well

Eyes Look Into the Well - meaning Summary

Grief Amid Ruined Landscape

Auden’s short lyric presents a bleak scene where external ruin mirrors inner loss. Eyes and tears, a cracked tower, buried love and robbed hearts suggest betrayal and emotional desolation. Water images—wells, brooks, flooding—carry a sense of relentless sorrow and silence. The final lines imply comforts and truths removed by others, leaving the speaker bereft and voiceless. The poem feels like a compressed portrait of grief and moral collapse.

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Eyes look into the well, Tears run down from the eye; The tower cracked and fell From the quiet winter sky. Under a midnight stone Love was buried by thieves; The robbed heart begs for a bone, The damned rustle like leaves. Face down in the flooded brook With nothing more to say. Lies One the soldiers took, And spoiled and threw away.

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