Wystan Hugh Auden

This Lunar Beauty

This Lunar Beauty - meaning Summary

Ephemeral Lunar Beauty

Auden addresses a pristine, moonlike beauty that exists outside history and change. He contrasts this early, unmarked loveliness with later beauty that carries the traces of lovers and loss. The poem frames the lunar image as dream-time, resistant to the heart's usual haunted alterations, and suggests that sorrow and lasting love cannot touch this delicate state while it endures. Its value lies in being untouched rather than narratively explained.

Read Complete Analyses

This lunar beauty Has no history Is complete and early, If beauty later Bear any feature It had a lover And is another. This like a dream Keeps other time And daytime is The loss of this, For time is inches And the heart's changes Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted. But this was never A ghost's endeavor Nor finished this, Was ghost at ease, And till it pass Love shall not near The sweetness here Nor sorrow take His endless look.

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