Reviewed by Warren Hershberger and Ibid
April 3, 2006

Time has taught you
how much inspiration
your vices brought you,
what imagination
can owe temptation
yielded to,
that many a fine
expressive line
would not have existed,
had you resisted:
as a poet, you
know this is true,
and though in Kirk
you sometimes pray
to feel contrite,
it doesn’t work.
Felix Culpa, you say:
perhaps you’re right.

You hope, yes,
your books will excuse you,
save you from hell;
nevertheless,
without looking sad,
without in any way
seeming to blame
(He doesn’t need to,
knowing well
what a lover of art
like yourself pays heed to),
God may reduce you
on Judgment Day
to tears of shame,
reciting by heart
the poems you would
have written, had
your life been good.

W. H. Auden, from the epilogue to his elegy to Louis MacNeice in his book of poetry, About the House(1965), 23.

 

ibid asked Warren to give us his thoughts on the poem.

Warren: This poem, by Pulitzer-prize-winning poet W. H. Auden, imagines the last judgment when his poet friend will stand before the Lord and the great sorrow he will feel because he lost out with God:

“God may reduce you
on Judgment Day
to tears of shame,
reciting by heart
the poems you would
have written, had
your life been good.”

ibid: What is the poem saying to you?

Warren: The poem speaks to me of how both saints and sinners have a destiny in their life that depends on the grace which only God can give.  It seems to me that this poem is a secular confirmation of the verse in the book of Jonah where the prophet, stuck in the belly of a fish and covered with seaweed, comes to a realization from God. 

“When my life was ebbing away,
I remembered you, LORD,
and my prayer rose to you,
to your holy temple.
Those who cling to worthless idols
forfeit the grace that could be theirs.
But I, with a song of thanksgiving,
will sacrifice to you.
What I have vowed I will make good.
Salvation comes from the LORD.”

(Jonah 2:7-9 NIV, (emphasis added))

(Jonah 2:7-9 NIV, (emphasis added))

Jonah’s “worthless idol” was that he wanted to stay in Jerusalem, serve in the temple, and not listen to what God wanted him to do. God wanted him to go to heathen Ninevah (modern day Iraq) and preach to them so they could make sacrifices on their heathen altars and find salvation that depends on the loving kindness of God.

In the poem, which is an elegy after the death of W. H. Auden’s friend Louis MacNeice, Auden reflects how much more the poetry of his friend would have been had he lived a life of goodness and obedience to God. No one but God can know what great works of poetry could have been written, or what great fruits of their talent any other human being could have with God’s grace.

ibid: What do you want 90&9 readers to get from the poem?

Warren: Many places in the Old Testament the Hebrew word hassid is translated in different ways. It is translated as mercy, grace, love, or loving-kindness.  But it refers to the eternal loving-kindness of God that He promised in His law, He fulfilled in His incarnation, and which will never fail.  Both Jonah and W. H. Auden discuss how we can reject God’s eternal loving mercy when we decide that we know how to live our life on our own. Why risk missing out on God’s highest plan for our life by substituting anything that we make for ourselves? 

ibid: What made you want to share it?

Warren: One of my favorite verses in the Bible is, “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).  Sometimes this world tries to make us believe that something it can offer is better than living for God. It can even seem to be good—like family, or using your talent, even in a church setting, or doing well in this world. But to say that there anything in this world that is better than serving God is a lie. His loving-kindness is better than life.
 
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