'Journey to Iceland' by WH Auden

From the 1937 'Letters from Iceland' by Auden and Louis MacNeice based on their visit to Iceland the year before.

And here is Auden reading it.



Journey To Iceland

And the traveller hopes: “Let me be far from any 
Physician”; and the ports have names for the sea; 
       The citiless, the corroding, the sorrow; 
       And North means to all: “Reject”.

And the great plains are for ever where cold creatures are hunted, 
And everywhere; the light birds flicker and flaunt; 
       Under a scolding flag the lover 
       Of islands may see at last,

Faintly, his limited hope; as he nears the glitter 
Of glaciers; the sterile immature mountains intense 
       In the abnormal day of this world, and a river’s 
       Fan-like polyp of sand.

Then let the good citizen here find natural marvels: 
The horse-shoe ravine, the issue of steam from a cleft 
       In the rock, and rocks, and waterfalls brushing the 
       Rocks, and among the rock birds.

And the student of prose and conduct, places to visit; 
The site of a church where a bishop was put in a bag, 
       The bath of a great historian, the rock where 
       An outlaw dreaded the dark.

Remember the doomed man thrown by his horse and crying: 
“Beautiful is the hillside, I will not go”; 
       The old woman “He that I loved the 
       Best, to him I was worst,”

For Europe is absent. This is an island and therefore 
Unreal. And the steadfast affections of its dead may be bought 
       By those whose dreams accuse them of being 
       Spitefully alive, and the pale

From too much passion of kissing feel pure in its deserts. 
Can they? For the world is, and the present, and the lie. 
       And the narrow bridge over a torrent, 
       And the small farm under a crag

Are natural settings for the jealousies of a province; 
And the weak vow of fidelity is formed by the cairn; 
       And within the indigenous figure on horseback 
       On the bridle-path down by the lake

The blood moves also by crooked and furtive inches, 
Asks all our questions: “Where is the homage? When 
       Shall justice be done? Who is against me? 
       Why am I always alone?”

Present then the world to the world with its mendicant shadow; 
Let the suits be flash, the Minister of Commerce insane; 
       Let jazz be bestowed on the huts, and the beauty's 
       Set cosmopolitan smile.

For our time has no favourite suburb; no local features 
Are those of the young for whom all wish to care; 
       The promise is only a promise, the fabulous 
       Country impartially far.

Tears fall in all the rivers. Again some driver 
Pulls on his gloves and in a blinding snowstorm starts 
       Upon his deadly journey; and again some writer 
       Runs howling to his art.

MacNeice, Hughes, Eliot, Auden and Spender on a stag night.