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Transcript

Law, Like Love

By: W. H. Auden

Abram Capone and

Molly Struhammer

Law, say the gardeners, is the sun,

Law is the one

All gardeners obey

To-morrow, yesterday, to-day.

Law is the wisdom of the old,

The impotent grandfather's feebly scold;

The grandchildren put out a treble tongue,

Law is the senses of the young.

Law, says the priest with a priestly look,

Expounding to an unpriestly people,

Law is the words in my priestly book,

Law is my pulpit and my steeple.

Law, says the judge as he looks down his nose,

Speaking clearly and most severely,

Law is as I've told you before,

Law is as you know I suppose,

Law is but let me explain it once more,

Law is The Law.

Yet law-abiding scholars write:

Law is neither wrong nor right,

Law is only crimes

Punished by places and by times,

Law is the clothes men wear

Anytime, anywhere,

Law is Good morning and Good night.

Others say, Law is our Fate;

Others say, Law is our State;

Others say, others say

Law is no more,

Law has gone away.

And always the loud angry crowd,

Very angry and very loud,

Law is We,

And always the soft idiot softly Me.

If we, dear, know we know no more

Than they about the Law,

If I no more than you

Know what we should and should not do

Except that all agree

Gladly or miserably

That the Law is

And that all know this

If therefore thinking it absurd

To identify Law with some other word,

Unlike so many men

I cannot say Law is again,

No more than they can we suppress

The universal wish to guess

Or slip out of our own position

Into an unconcerned condition.

Although I can at least confine

Your vanity and mine

To stating timidly

A timid similarity,

We shall boast anyvay:

Like love I say.

Like love we don't know where or why,

Like love we can't compel or fly,

Like love we often weep,

Like love we seldom keep.

1. Meaning

1. Meaning (cont.)

4. Find the skeleton

6. Tone

9. Genres

10. Imagination

2. Antecedent scenario

8. Roads not taken...

3. Division into parts

5. Language

Essay Prompt

7. Agency and speech acts

The emotional arc is mainly downward as the poem spirals into apathy and regret. Initially the poem starts out lighthearted talking about gardeners and the sun but quickly progresses towards slightly darker musings about the nature of law and its restraining nature towards men. The poem then progresses toward the speaker’s views on love where he reveals his cynical views on love between two people.

The poet has created a wonderful comparison between law and love, two concepts man has struggled with since the beginning of time, and while the poet implies the constrictive nature of the law he also implies that the law is caring. On the other side of the analogy, the speaker compares love to the law, implying a certain prescriptive and regimented nature to love, a concept society often classifies as beyond such boundaries.

The poem falls clearly into the modern genre even as the use of a loose meter and rhyme scheme help to tether it in more traditional works of poetry. The widely varying meter and altogether confusing if even present rhyme scheme provide echoes of the poems traditional roots while the subject matter and surprisingly clear structure and language place it in the modern tradition.

The speaker particularly shies away from direct statements, instead using metaphors and similes to convey his meaning. Throughout the entire poem the speaker refuses to directly identify what exactly the law is or what exactly love is either. Instead he compares the two concepts to other concepts which are familiar to the reader allowing the reader to then extrapolate his own conclusions from the metaphoric statements.

The speaker’s tone is regretful and perhaps a bit cynical. Additionally, the tone is partially critical as he relates the judges speech as being dictatorial and dry. The speaker’s cynical and regretful tone expresses itself in the last few stanzas about love but also in the last line of the 7th stanza, “and always the soft idiot softly Me.” The speaker’s overall tone is characterized by cynicism but progresses from apathy to criticism towards regret as the poem develops.

The poem begins with third person narration until the 6th stanza where the poem switches to first person narration with the use of the personal pronoun “our.” The poem is then divided into two more sections, splitting the poem’s first person narration into two clear pieces, one dealing with the law, and the second dealing with love. The split between these two pieces comes in the second to last stanza where the speaker draws the connection between the law and love. The poem reaches a climax at this point with the pronouncement that the speaker boasts that the law is like love.

Identify and discuss the speaker's use of metaphor and simile in his endeavor to define love and the law through comparative language and relate tone of the poem to the speakers success or failure to reach a satisfying conclusion to his task.

That rules are

And that everyone understands the fact

If then understanding it to be bizarre,

To recognize rules with other parts of language,

Not the same as other people,

I will not describe rules anymore.

Just as we cannot bury

The commonly understood desire to suppose

Or become someone else

Unconcerned, unlike we are now.

But I will at say

Our narcissism

Saying shyly,

There is a shy common ground,

We proclaim anyway,

Rules are like affection.

Just as affection is, we cannot understand where or for what purpose,

The same as affection, we cannot force or rise above,

The same as affection, we are often sad

The same as affection, we are rarely permanent.

Rules, say those who garden, are the sun.

Rules are the only way

Those who garden can work correctly.

The day after, the day before, the current day

Rules are how old people are wise,

The ineffective patriarchs weakly inveigh;

The young speak in high pitched voices,

Rule is the common sense of the new generation.

Rules, says the religious figure with a holy look,

Explaining to a weakly religious congregation,

Rules are what is in my religious manuscript,

Rules are comprised of my podium and my architecture.

Rules, says the law enforcer as he glares down,

Talking simply and very harshly,

Rules are as I have already explained,

Rules are as you must already comprehend, I assume,

Rules are, but allow me to again describe them,

Rules are rules.

But rule following academics record,

Rules are not correct or incorrect,

Rules only restrict bad behavior

Restrict with decreased movement and lengths of time,

Rules are the clothes people use

In any time or place,

Rules are a new day and new night.

The poet uses linking verbs constantly (“Law is”) and continually uses similes and metaphors to describe love in numerous different contexts. While the speaker compares love to myriad objects and feelings he stops short of defining love and simply leaves such sentences unfinished, declaring instead that “Law is The Law.” Additionally, the speaker capitalizes “Law” constantly, elevating it to a proper noun, a thing rather than a concept. By constantly comparing the law and never actually defining it, the speaker sets up his correlation between the law and love, until he develops this notion through excessive repetition in the final stanza, where he repeats the phrase “Like love.” As an interesting side note, the poet does not capitalize love but does at time capitalize “Law” demonstrating his understanding of love as a concept but also his concept of the law as being a real thing to be grasped.

The speaker appears by the last few stanzas to be male (as his address of his love might suggest) and appears to be engaged in or recent broken away from a serious relationship as he speaks about the impermanence of love. By using repetition so heavily, the speaker draws the reader’s attention to the metaphors he makes not only between love and the law or even between the law and what he compares it to, but also between the two things he compares the law to. It stands to reason that if the law “is the sun” and law “is the wisdom of the old” and even “the sense of the young.” It stands to reason that the sun, the wisdom of the old, and the senses of the young are all alike as well. Through the heavy use of repetition the speaker demonstrates unusual comparisons between concepts and objects in everyday life.

Very little seems to have taken place before the poem begins. This lack of any clear antecedent scenario is derived from the nature of narration that the poet employs. The poem is largely in the third person, and once the speaker adopts first person narration, it is limited to generalizations and overarching statements which could correlate to any time or place. All that one may glean about the speaker is that some unfortunate event involving love must have happened earlier in their life and the speaker is either in or recently out of a committed relationship. These two facts may be most easily demonstrated by the last stanza where the speaker describes love and the law as causing tears and being by nature transient and fleeting.

Some people say, rules are destiny;

Some people believe rules are government;

Some people say, other people believe

Rules don’t exist now,

Rules have left.

And the verbally aggressive, disgruntled group of people,

extraordinarily disgruntled and very verbal,

Rules are us,

At all times, the quiet moron, quietly myself.

If the two of us, understand we don’t understand anything different

then other people can about rules,

If I don’t understand more than you

Understand what we are obligated and obligated to not do

Excepting that everyone believes the same as everyone else

Happily or not happily

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