A Stage Exists Someplace
A POEM
When players voices no longer ring,
A set becomes a shabby thing —
Forgotten dreams, an unreal town.
It’s time that we should pull it down.
But I pause to reminisce a while.
I said my lines with frown or smile,
To fit the action; but now it’s past.
My little victories could not last —
In barren disarray they lie
With all the dreams that passed me by.
I shudder at time’s implacable pace.
Yet I know a stage exists someplace
Where I shall say my lines again
And sing of things that might have been
Where nothing holy is cast away,
And secret dreams shall have their day.
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Evidently a man of coarse, even slovenly, personal habits, Auden was as meticulous as T.S. Eliot in the precision of his verse.