About suffering they were never wrong, <br />The Old Masters; how well, they understood <br />Its human position; how it takes place <br />While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; <br />How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting <br />For the miraculous birth, there always must be <br />Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating <br />On a pond at the edge of the wood: <br />They never forgot <br />That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course <br />Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot <br />Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse <br />Scratches its innocent behind on a tree. <br /> <br />In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away <br />Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may <br />Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, <br />But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone <br />As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green <br />Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen <br />Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky, <br />had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on. <br /> <br /> <br />Click to View Breughel's "Fall of Icarus"<br /><br />W.H. Auden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mus-eacute-e-des-beaux-arts/
