Mention of Auden on yesterday's poem of the day blog led me to think this morning about by far my favourite poem of his - in fact, the poem I'd probably take to a desert island with me, were I allowed only one - his elegy on the death of WB Yeats. I'm fairly sure I've mentioned this poem before elsewhere, but here it is in full, nevertheless. I first came across it over 10 years ago, while flicking through a poetry anthology in a friend's room at university, and a decade later it still brings tears to my eyes every time I read it.

There is so much that I admire in this poem that it's difficult to know where to start. The imagery of the first section is remarkable; his use of adverbs to express the constraints to which we are all subject ("the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,/ And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom") is almost unbearably delicate. I love the way the second section responds to and advances Yeats's own theories on what poetry can and cannot (and should not attempt to) accomplish. And I love the unashamedly demonstrative tribute of the final section's abbreviated heroic couplets.

What a poem. I should warn you that I am now sitting at my computer, spoiling for a fight with anyone who presumes to disagree!

In Memory of WB Yeats by WH Auden

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays; By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself, An afternoon of nurses and rumours; The provinces of his body revolted, The squares of his mind were empty, Silence invaded the suburbs, The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections, To find his happiness in another kind of wood And be punished under a foreign code of conscience. The words of a dead man Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse, And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed, And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom, A few thousand will think of this day As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all: The parish of rich women, physical decay, Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry. Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still, For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives In the valley of its making where executives Would never want to tamper, flows on south From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives, A way of happening, a mouth.

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest: William Yeats is laid to rest. Let the Irish vessel lie Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark All the dogs of Europe bark, And the living nations wait, Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace Stares from every human face, And the seas of pity lie Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.