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I have read the poem more like... 5 times, and I am still not able to conclude what was author of the poem actually trying to write; who was the boy, why did he run? Anyone else had the same trouble for this poem?
I thought boy was making a run from the army that is approaching... But, some say he was a spy or soldier so might be a "Call of duty" for the boy.
http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/auden.sound.html[^] (Poem: O What Is That Sound)
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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It's about enforced conscription; pretty much a way better version of Danny Boy.
Don't look for meaning in poetry, just feel it.
If you don't feel anything, try a different poem or poet -- you can please some of the people, etc.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Actually I did feel the poetry. The thing was she (my girl) has this poem in her course so I was to explain the meaning and the background of it to her. That is when it all happened! 
I have felt mostly Mark Twain (worthy to mention; The damned human race[^], what a great essay it was), Shakespeare (not mostly) and most often... Myself! I prefer my own writings
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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Well it's unlikely to be a boy - he will be at least old enough to be considered for army service and to have taken marriage vows.
I agree with @Mark_Wallace that it's likely about (emphasis on the enforced part) conscription but it's possibly also about how promises (marriage vows) can go out the window in the face of a dire emergency (or sometimes not so dire  )
Note I'm assuming that the two voices are male and female - unlikely to be anything else given Auden's time.
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Exactly... CHill60, this was also my concern. That he is leaving the girl in the emergency. But she (my girl) would never believe me. 
Anyways, thank you for saying the same thing. Brought tears to my eyes!
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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As I read it, it's about the illusion of war being a great and noble thing where nobody is killed or injured and where the land and people are respected, even if they are your enemy. The last stanza illustrates the reality of it.
Marc
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Hi, Afzaal,
The poem is (deliberately, you can be sure) written with a high-degree of ambiguity; myriad interpretations are possible, including which genders are speaking in the "two voices" in the dialogue that creates the structure of the poem.
It may interest you to hear Auden reading the poem: [^].
If you examine Auden's life in the years before he wrote this poem (probably in 1935) you can see that was in [^] a time of moving towards concern with social injustice and political activism which culminated in his decision in 1937 to volunteer in the Spanish Civil War to fight against the fascists: he planned to be an ambulance driver, but they put him to work doing propaganda. He had married the daughter of Thomas Mann in 1932 to help her escape the Nazis (Auden was homosexual).
«To kill an error's as good a service, sometimes better than, establishing new truth or fact.» Charles Darwin in "Prospero's Precepts"
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Hello Bill,
Good one. You have pointed me to the right path. To understand a context of writing one must first give attention to the context and time period of author himself.
In the end you mentioned, "He had married the daughter of Thomas Mann in 1932 to help her escape the Nazis", so would that be a reference to when he makes a run saying, "I must be leaving"?
The sh*t I complain about
It's like there ain't a cloud in the sky and it's raining out - Eminem
~! Firewall !~
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Afzaal Ahmad Zeeshan wrote: ...would that be a reference to when he makes a run saying, "I must be leaving"?
The "golden standard" for trying to answer such questions would be to find what (if anything) the author said about the poem, or what friends, or critics, said about it at the time. In the case of Auden, it would be most interesting to find out if his close friends the poet Stephen Spender, and Christoper Isherwood (novelist, playwright) ever mentioned this poem.
Speaking as a poet (since age eleven), imho, poetry often, like dreams, "crystallizes" out of multiple layers of experience, and out of the myriad vectors emerging from within the self, and out of the myriad external factors impinging on/defining the self and defining the nature of language in literary discourse.
This poem by Auden has a tangible musical quality to it; it's in ballad form; the language is in what you might call a "folk" form that stands in opposition to the "ornate, flowerly, romantic" tradition ... it stands in great contrast to Auden's later work when he emulated T. S. Eliot's rather "atonal" surreal symbolism.
«To kill an error's as good a service, sometimes better than, establishing new truth or fact.» Charles Darwin in "Prospero's Precepts"
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Does shoplifting from the Apple store only count as scrumping?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Mongo: Mongo only pawn... in game of life.
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I'd be willing to bet that the one bit of apple hardware that functions to perfection is the alarm at the exit of the shop.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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The Cat: So what did you do?
Lister: Well, like, scrumping. When I was a kid back in Liverpool, we always used to go scrumping.
Kryten: Oh, stealing apples? That's hardly a crime, sir.
Lister: No, but me and my mates, we used to go scrumping for cars.
Some men are born mediocre, some men achieve mediocrity, and some men have mediocrity thrust upon them.
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I could imagine that those who steal from an Apple store would get some kind of klepto-frisson during/after the purloination not to mention pre-boost arousal, but I'd need warp-drive to imagine they would equate that with having sex.
cheers, Bill
«To kill an error's as good a service, sometimes better than, establishing new truth or fact.» Charles Darwin in "Prospero's Precepts"
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Down with Darth...literally!
New version: WinHeist Version 2.1.1 new web site.
I know the voices in my head are not real but damn they come up with some good ideas!
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The Lego piece was missing some explosions...
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If Michael Bay made Lego movies, you can bet you would see plastic pieces explode.
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so I sourced my map file from Berkeley a while back. Works pretty good. Good map overlay for all the areas in the world where my company has something going on. I was pretty proud.
yesterday someone from India was complaining that the map was wrong and India doesn't go over that far East. hmmm, Looking at Un.org, Wikipedia and Google maps it most certainly does.
So in case you are wondering. Yes India is further East on the map than Bangladesh. Quite a discussion about this.
I love it when I am right. Doesn't happen very often.
<grin>
To err is human to really mess up you need a computer
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Most people are spectacularly ignorant on the placing of their countries with respect to latitude and longitude. For a fun quiz question just ask people to name the countries which lie on the Greenwich Mean, the Tropics or the Equator.
I was involved in a discussion recently when a Scottish news presenter in London was criticised for asking if it was still dark in Western Scotland the morning of the Equinox when he could clearly see daylight out of his own window. People were incredulous when it was pointed out that the whole of mainland Scotland lies west of London and some parts could expect sunrise a full twenty minutes after it.
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rnbergren wrote: Yes India is further East on the map than Bangladesh. Quite a discussion about this.
I would think it goes over to at least 27.1403N, 97.1658E.
"One man's wage rise is another man's price increase." - Harold Wilson
"Fireproof doesn't mean the fire will never come. It means when the fire comes that you will be able to withstand it." - Michael Simmons
"You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him." - James D. Miles
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All that proves is that the world is indeed flat.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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rnbergren wrote: I love it when I am right.
You're absolutely right.
Easternmost point of Bangladesh is 92°35'E, while Easternmost point of India is 97°20'E. Source[^]
rnbergren wrote: Doesn't happen very often.
Its enough if this happens when it matters.
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