As the Poets Have Mournfully Sung

As the Poets Have Mournfully Sung - meaning Summary

Absurd Universality of Death

A short, darkly comic poem stating that death spares no social type. Auden lists assorted figures—innocent youth, the wealthy, the comic, the sexually privileged—to underline death’s indiscriminate reach. The tone is mock-mournful and ironic: it treats traditional poetic lament as formulaic while exposing mortality’s absurd randomness. The effect is both bitterly humorous and disillusioned, collapsing solemnity into a brisk, satirical observation about human vulnerability.