Clocks and Lovers

Klara Sulce

Mr.Perez

English AP

11 December 2011

           

            “The Clocks and the Lovers” by W.H. Auden is about the contrast between clocks and lovers. This poem refers to the love that we all experience in life that can seem eternal at times and stimulate us to be forever passionate. Auden brings to the reader's attention the truth about time, and how it fades our love away without sympathy. Auden explains that love has no meaning in the beginning of the poem and shows this through the lover's point of view. The reader's feelings are exaggerated as being strong enough to make a “river jump over the mountain.” The overall mental attitude of the lover is one of everlasting delight and romantic happiness.

            As the poem progresses and we grasp onto the lover's feelings, our attention is shifted to that of the clock's, who tells the mere truth. The clocks are powerful, for they end the lover's time and begin the attitude we all go through at some point. This is that state of strain and business of society with “headaches and worry, vaguely life leaking away.” The clocks believe that this is the fate that was chosen for lovers'. Auden's language and imagery change extremely from the lovers to the perspective of the clocks'. The lover demonstrates his emotions by song and the clock by “whirr and chime” which set the time right away for the reader. Love is the one word that the language of the lover is filled with. All the animals mentioned are loving and joyous, from the salmon, to the geese, then to the rabbits.

            The clocks however, show many signs of love in a different way, which is through coughing, worry, breaking, stares, cracking, and distress. They also go on to courageously state, “You cannot conquer time.” These apprehensions of reality depict a depressing sense to love and how time fades it away day by day. The poet's purpose in assembling this poem show us that this is reality we should realize it so we can either expect it so not to get our hopes up, or never fall into this curse ourselves.