1. Musée des Beaux Arts (Museum of Beautiful Art) -W. H. Auden
By: Maria Palacios,Karla Contreras , Gabriela Figueroa , Alondra Chavez
Period: 5

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

3. Biography
W. H Auden
Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, on February 21, 1907.
He was educated at Christ Church and graduated from Oxford in 1928.
His collection Poems was privately printed in 1928 but more like in 1930.
He was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, also William Blake and others.
His work was popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech.
He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war.
In 1939 he moved to the United States, Where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen.
He served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 1954 to
He died in Vienna on September 29, 1973.
vernacular: the language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular country or region.

4. Analysis of the poem
The poem ‘Musee des Beaux Arts’, which means ‘Museum of Fine Arts’ in French, is a poem by W.H. Auden composed after he visited that museum in Brussels, Belgium . The poem is a reflection (meditation) on the old painting by Peter Breughel, the Elder.
Type of poem: Free verse
Tone: sad and also ironic because
Diction: positive than negative
Type of metric: is written in iambic pentameter ( each line contains five division of feet and each foot consists of an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable)

5. Analysis of the poem
Enjambment: there are sixteen enjambment “Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse” “Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
Figures Languages:
Allusion; “ the old masters” European artists, whose works has stayed popular for centuries due to their beauty and technical skill. “ miraculous birth” biblical allusion to the birth of Christ.
Imagery: “Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse” “Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.”
juxtaposition: “For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating On a pond at the edge of the wood”
Enjambment: the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza.
Allusion: a reference to an outside fact, events or other source.
Imagery: the use of words to represents things, action, or ideas by sensory description.
Juxtaposition : the fact of two things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect.

6. First Stanza
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
Walking dully along;
Suffering: the state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship.

7. Second Stanza How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where The dogs go on with their doggy life and the
Torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
Miraculous birth: occurring through divine or supernatural
Intervention , or manifesting such power
Christ carrying his cross up to calvary
Dreadful martyrdom: causing or involving great suffering Fear, or unhappiness extremely bad or serious.
Untidy: disordered, missing.
Torturer’s: the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment

8. Second Stanza
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the plowman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed on.
Leisurely: Free time when one is not working or attending to other duties.
Forsaken: Abandoned.

9. Icarus
Icarus was the young son of Daedalus, one of King Minos’ servants. Daedalus was way too smart and inventive, thus, he started thinking how he and Icarus would escape the Labyrinth. Knowing that his architectural creation was too complicated, he figured out that they could not come out on foot. He also knew that the shores of Crete were perfectly guarded, thus, they would not be able to escape by sea either. The only way left was the air.
Daedalus managed to create gigantic wings, using branches of osier and connected them with wax. He taught Icarus how to fly, but told him to keep away from the sun because the heat would make the wax melt, destroying the wings.
Daedalus and Icarus managed to escape the Labyrinth and flew to the sky, free. The flight of Daedalus and Icarus was the first time that man managed to fight the laws of nature and beat gravity.

10. Theme of the Poem The theme of this poem is:
While something amazing is happening, life still goes on...This is also giving you the idea of how individual suffering is ignored by the rest of the world and everyone continues doing their daily activities without paying attention to other people’s life.