The Poem

“Letter to Lord Byron” was written during and after a trip to Iceland. W. H. Auden and fellow
poet Louis MacNeice had approached Faber, the British publishing firm, and proposed a
travel book. Faber accepted and gave the poets the money to finance the trip. Auden, not
being a travel writer, had no real idea what to write on for the book, but he had brought a copy
of Lord Byron’s Don Juan (1819-1824) along to read. He decided to write a verse letter to
Byron, informing the poet, who died in 1824, what was happening in the Europe of the
1930’s. As such, “Letter to Lord Byron” has more digressions than it does Byron; indeed, one
might claim that the poem is almost solely composed of digressions.

The poem comprises five unequal parts, all written in rime royal, all discursive and
conversational in tone. The actual trip to Iceland that served as the occasion for the poem is
mentioned, but in passing and at irregular intervals. References to the journey serve merely as
a frame for what Auden really wants to say.

Part 1 begins with a direct address to Byron, apologizing for disturbing him. Auden—there is
no point in insisting on a persona here, since the poet makes no pretense of developing any
voice other than his own—mentions that he is in Iceland awaiting the arrival of the rest of his
fellow travelers, and he discusses why he chose to address the letter to Byron. Auden had
brought Byron’s Don Juan and a novel by Jane Austen with him, but he finds both what he
has to say and his medium for saying it more attuned to Byron. He talks about his choice of a
form and then begins to give a defense of light verse, a form not highly prized in the literature
of the twentieth century.

Part 2 initially describes a little of Auden’s immediate reaction to Iceland, but soon he begins
to talk of recent developments in Europe. He acquaints Byron with the changes of taste in
England, the confusion of the class system because of industry—“We’ve grown, you see, a lot
more democratic,/ And Fortune’s ladder is for all to climb”—and then imagines how modern
publicity would make a celebrity of Don Juan. After a quick glance at the art scene, Auden
begins discussing “the spirit of the people,” finding a conscious rejection of heroism for
economic comfort: “‘I may not be courageous, but I save.’” This spirit is inimical to that of
Byron, so Auden next imagines Byron returned to modern realities, but this is not a heroic
age: “In modern warfare, though it’s just as gory,/ There isn’t any individual glory.”

Auden begins part 3 just before setting off for an excursion into the countryside of Iceland.
Auden once again affirms his liking for light verse and announces that he shares Byron’s
belief that William Wordsworth is “a most bleak old bore.” This observation leads naturally
enough into a discussion of landscape, then proceeds to a lengthy consideration of the
estrangement of the artist from society—an estrangement that Auden traces to the nineteenth
century.

Part 4 begins on ship heading back to England. Auden quickly summarizes what he gained
from the trip, his main accomplishment being learning to ride a pony. Then, triggered by his
returning home, he begins to tell his own biography. Starting with a glance at his passport and
his own Icelandic ancestry, Auden takes a general, and generally light-hearted, look at his own
character, eventually pronouncing, “‘Your fate will be to linger on outcast/ A selfish pink old
Liberal to the last.’” Then he begins to recount his upbringing, his early interest in machinery,
school days during World War I, his adventures with headmasters (which allows him an attack
on “Normality” and a defense of eccentric teachers), the incident that led him first to write
poetry, his days at the University of Oxford, then his time spent in Berlin on family money,
his return to England, and his teaching at a boarding school. He finally gets to his work in
documentary filmmaking as the boat reaches the dock.

Part 5 is by far the briefest of the sections; Auden does, however, manage to touch on the
coming war, labor difficulties, his essential Englishness, and the proper place to send his
“Letter to Lord Byron.” He finally pictures Byron lounging with other poets in heaven (“Are
Poets saved? Well, let’s suppose they are”) and apologizes for the length of the “letter that’s
already far too long,/ Just like the Prelude or the Great North Road”; he then justifies the
poem’s size when he closes: “As to its length, I tell myself you’ll need it,/ You’ve all eternity
in which to read it.”

Forms and Devices

“Letter to Lord Byron” is an obvious response to Don Juan, which Auden was reading at the
time. Exactly why Auden chose a different form for “Letter to Lord Byron” is unclear. Don
Juan is written in ottava rima, which consists of stanzas of eight lines of iambic pentameter
with the first, third, and fifth lines rhyming with one another, as do the second, fourth, and
sixth. The verse form is completed with lines 7 and 8 forming a rhyming couplet.

Auden claims, “I want a form that’s large enough to swim in,/ And talk on any subject that I
choose.” Certainly, Byron found ottava rima appropriate for expansive, digressive verse.
Auden acknowledges this: “Ottava Rima would, I know be proper,/ The proper instrument on
which to pay/ My compliments.” He states that if he did use it, however, he would “come up a
cropper.” Certainly such a claim should be taken with more than the proverbial grain of salt.
First of all, rime royal, which Auden chose, is as difficult a form as ottava rima; second, even
though at the time he was a poet still in his twenties, Auden had already shown himself to be a
master of form. Clearly his claim of deficient skills should not be considered seriously.

Perhaps Auden believed that Byron had already done as much as one can with ottava rima in
the comic mode. In choosing rime royal, Auden selected an expansive form that had not been
utilized with any great success at length since Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde
(1382), which was not a humorous poem. Rime royal consists of seven-line stanzas of iambic
pentameter, with the first and third lines rhyming and the second, fourth, and fifth lines
rhyming. The verse then closes with a rhyming couplet composed of the sixth and seventh
lines. In effect, the form is identical to ottava rima with the fifth line omitted. What this
omission does is make the verse end with two pairs of rhyming couplets.

Regardless of the reason for his choice, rime royal left Auden with the repetition of rhyme and
the drawing together of the closing couplet so helpful to humorous verse. Like Byron, Auden
makes extensive use of feminine, or multisyllabic, rhyme, the bounce of which tends to have a
comic effect: “At least my modern pieces shall be cheery/ Like English bishops on the
Quantum Theory.” He also echoes Byron in calling conscious attention to his supposed
deficiencies in poetry: “Et cetera, et cetera. O curse,/ That is the flattest line in English verse.”

Themes and Meanings

It would be impossible in this brief space to discuss adequately all the themes of “Letter to
Lord Byron.” The poem by design is without design; themes are introduced, dropped, and
picked up again, sometimes merely touched on, at other times discussed in detail, and always
with a lightness of tone. Topics include the psychology of twentieth century man and the
isolation of the artist from society.

Auden tells Lord Byron that people have the “same shape and appearance” and “haven’t
changed the way that kissing’s done” but that modern man is “another man in many ways.”
He says that the contemporary man is best portrayed by cartoonists such as Walt Disney. This
man “kicks the tyrant only in his dreams,/ Trading on pathos, dreading all extremes;/ The little
Mickey with the hidden grudge.”

This is economic man, bred “on Hire-Purchase by Insurance,” fearing admonishment by “tax
collector and a waterboard.” He makes no pretense to the heroic, as “‘Heroes are sent by
ogres to the grave./ I may not be courageous, but I save.’” He dares to “give his ogreship the
raspberry/ Only when his gigantic back is turned.” He is caught in his fears, but he fears even
more to escape into uncertainties, so his oppressor knows that his comfort makes him a slave:
“The ogre need but shout ’security,’/ To make this man, so lovable, so mild,/ As madly cruel
as a frightened child.” This is not a time for the disinterested hero, for those who risk their
lives for the cause of others as Byron did for Greek independence.

Auden begins his consideration of the artist and society with the Augustan age. He speaks of
two arts; one was dependent on “his lordship’s patronage” and was more of an aristocratic
pursuit. This form of “high” art Auden personifies in Alexander Pope. The other form of art
was “pious, sober, moving slowly,/ Appealing mainly to the poor and lowly” and is
personified in Isaac Watts. These arts were very different, but Auden is unusually emphatic as
to the central point: “The important point to notice, though, is this:/ Each poet knew for whom
he had to write.” He makes the assertion that art must be attendant—that is, must serve a
particular class with whom the artist shares similar concerns. What art must not be is
independent.

Yet this is just what has happened. Auden writes that each man naturally wants his
independence, but for the artist, such independence is disastrous. Until the Industrial
Revolution, the artist had to depend on the patron and please the taste of the patron or the
class: “He had to keep his technique to himself/ Or find no joint upon his larder shelf.”

When the artist was able to declare his independence, however, he “sang and painted and
drew dividends,/ But lost responsibilities and friends.” At first there was great
experimentation and euphoria; Auden writes of his imagined Poet’s Party: “Brilliant the
speeches improvised, the dances,/ And brilliant too the technical advances.” Soon, however,
the artist is ignored by the public that he scoffs at rather than serves and is left alone with only
his technique. At the Poet’s Party, some “have passed out entirely in the rears;/ Some have
been sick in corners; the sobering few/ Are trying to think hard of something new.” Technique
is now everything; the audience is gone, and art becomes solipsistic.

Auden does mention that this applies more to the visual arts; even at “the Poet’s Party,” the
majority “of the guests were painters.” The case applies in a lesser way to literature, though
the onus of meaning generally attached to words does make most writing more accessible
than the other arts.

This is but one of many themes running through “Letter to Lord Byron,” but it is particularly
noteworthy in being one of the first instances where Auden is consciously rejecting the
opaque style that brought him fame in his twenties and is attempting to reach out with plainer
speech to a wider audience, in effect beginning to distrust the vatic nature of his early verse.