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.
Psychoanalytic Analysis
An image of Bristol Street mentioned in the poem
The poem As I Walked Out Evening was written by modernist poet Wystan Hugh Auden in 1937 and published in 1940 in his volume, Another Time. This particular poem was one of his earlier works and is considered a literary ballad with lyric poem elements. The poem expresses ways that time has a hold on love and how inevitable death and time are. There are three speakers throughout the ballad: the narrator, the singing lover and the clocks in the city that chime in unison. The narrator begins by walking along Bristol street where crowds of people are bustling about, but in all the business he only realizes the song of a lover near the bridge. The lover ( the next speaker) sings to the narrator of her endless love and goes on to paint a detailed picture of all the ways her love will last. The final speakers are the clocks that depict the realities of mortality and life. The clocks cut in after the singer is finished speaking to set the lovers straight by stating that time will always be close and unconquerable. As the clocks go on whirring and warning the audience can feel the tone darkening and by the end of the poem readers may get the feeling that time is victorious and love is gone. The most interesting subconscious element Auden wrote about in this poem was the whirring clocks and how his warnings on love are personified through them. One might say that W.H. Auden seems like a morbid man with hopeless views on love; a Romantic turned to a Realist over the course of time and heartbreak. He describes time as something that watches the lovers from the shadows and coughs while they kiss. This idea from the ballad proves that the clocks have their own personality and that it is a prominently Id personality because of time's constant reminding and threatening throughout the poem. Near the end of the poem when everything has come undone, he also states that the clocks finally stop their chiming and the lovers are no more, but the deep river runs on which correlates with The Great Gatsby's final line “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past". Both F. Scott Fitzgerald and W.H. Auden had similar ideas on love leaving people high and dry because of time's inability to be conquered or reversed.