liz E illuminates As I Walked Out One Evening

As I Walked Out One Evening
by W. H. Auden
As I walked out one evening,   Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement   Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river   I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway:    'Love has no ending. 'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you    Till China and Africa meet, And the river jumps over the mountain   And the salmon sing in the street, 'I'll love you till the ocean   Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking   Like geese about the sky. 'The years shall run like rabbits,    For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages,   And the first love of the world. But all the clocks in the city   Began to whirr and chime: 'O let not Time deceive you,   You cannot conquer Time. 'In the burrows of the Nightmare   Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow   And coughs when you would kiss. 'In headaches and in worry   Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy   To-morrow or to-day. 'Into many a green valley   Drifts the appalling snow; Time breaks the threaded dances   And the diver's brilliant bow. 'O plunge your hands in water,   Plunge them in up to the wrist; Stare, stare in the basin    And wonder what you've missed. 'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,   The desert sighs in the bed. And the crack in the tea-cup opens   A lane to the land of the dead. 'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack, And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,   And Jill goes down on her back. 'O look, look in the mirror,   O look in your distress: Life remains a blessing   Although you cannot bless. 'O stand, stand at the window   As the tears scald and start; You shall love your crooked neighbour   With your crooked heart.' It was late, late in the evening,   The lovers they were gone. The clocks had ceased their chiming,    And the deep river ran on.              This poem, As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Audens, is spoken from three separate speakers, the clocks, the couple in love and the narrator. The Couples point of view in the beginning of the poem was how they were in love, they thought they would be together forever and have a fairy tale ending. But then the clocks point of view chimed in and argued how the couples love is not endless. Their love is not going to be perfect and at a time they will soon drift apart. The clock in the poem represents time, the clock shows the concept of the force of structure in the couples relationship. All of the speakers in the poem try to show the nature and perception of the power of time.                This poem explains to readers how the narrator saw a couple in love while he was walking on the streets. Then the clocks showed the narrator that couples love cant last forever and time is really in control. When time is in control nothing else is, so love can not last forever. The only thing that lasted forever in the poem was the ever flowing river.