Musée des Beux Arts reading journal

Title analysis:
"Musée des Beux Arts", or Museum of beautiful/fine arts in English is the name of the fine art museum in Brussels, which W.H. Auden must have visited. He liked some of the art there so much that he wrote this 25 line poem about it.

"Storyline" synopsis:
There isn't any story in this poem, it must be said, it is simply Auden describing the people in the background of paintings going about their lives while important events are unfolding to people equally in the background. At first, he says about how the old masters were never wrong when it came to suffering and how it happens while other people are performing mundane acts like opening a window before proceeding to use Breughel's Icarus as an example. To cut a long story short, this poem is a good example of ekphrastic poetry, that is, poetry that describes art.

Themes:
There is only one theme in Musée des Beux Arts, and that is selfishness, as that is the theme to be found in Breughel's Icarus. We would rather carry on ploughing our field than to save a drowning boy.

Miscellaneous points:

• We know that this poem is set in 1940 in Brussels, before the German occupation in May. 
• The poem uses a subjective yet detached voice, the voice of Auden.
• Musée des Beux Arts is written in Free Verse, meaning that the stanzas are of random length with randomly sized lines and, in this case, randomly spaced rhymes. The first stanza lasts 13 lines, the second 1 and the third 8, lines range from 3 to 14 words long and it seems to have a simple A-B-C-A-D-E-D-B-F-G-F-G-E-H-H-I-J-K-K-I-J rhyming scheme.
• There is quite a good example of enjambement here, where a sentence runs down into it's own stanza, a one sentence stanza, no less. The first ends with "Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse" before changing stanza and going on to say that it "Scratches its innocent behind on a tree". There are other uses of enjambement, for example, line 3 to line 4, but none as dramatic as that.

Miss Gee reading journal

Title analysis:
Miss Gee? This is clearly the name of a woman, an unmarried woman. Gee is rather an odd surname, and it may just be nothing, but the word "gee" (as in "gee whizz Batman!") is actually a minced oath of "Jesus", just as "darn" is for "damn". Nothing else can be learnt from the main title, but the bracketed notification of the tune, St James's Infirmary, tells us that the poem is to be sung to a blues tune and seeing as blues music is never the most chipper of genres, we can surmise that this poem won't be a joyous read either, unless Auden is ironic in his choice of tune (as it happens, he is not).

Storyline synopsis:
Miss Gee, a spinster (unmarried lady who is older than unmarried ladies usually are) has a Freudian dream about a bull with the face of a vicar with "lowered horn"(PWOAR) chasing her, she then goes to church before going to the doctor, who proceeds to say that she has cancer. After being taken to the hospital, there is a time-jump to when she is dead and her corpse is used for medical study by "Oxford Groupers" who dissect her knee.

Miscellaneous points:

• Ah, it's my old friend, ballad form. Also to be found in  "O what is that sound". It is based on songs and could be sung, which  Miss Gee is plainly intended to be, as it set to a blues tune. It should go without saying (however, i'm still going to say it) that the poem uses "quatrain"- four lines per stanza. This use of a simple, short stanzas helps the reader to understand the words of the poem and the regular ABCB rhyming scheme throughout the poem's 25 stanzas assists in keeping things interesting.
• The diction (words) used in the poem seem rather childish, for example, we readers are asked if we would like to hear a "little" story and Dr. Thomas says that cancer is a "funny" thing. It seems as if Auden is talking down at us. Why? Well, maybe the moral in the story will tell us, if you are in pain, always go to your doctor, just in case it's serious. What sort of text has a moral? Fables do, of course. These are told to children to help them grasp ideas about life and society. It could be argued (for instance, by me) that this poem is doing the same job and it tries to achieve it's aim of teaching the maximum amount of people the dangers of not visiting the doctor by using easily understood language, humour (a bull with the face of a vicar) and sung in a style popular in the era (blues). HOWEVER, the childlike language and tone could also conceivably be used in an almost ironic fashion, as the tone of the poem is quite dark, because, after all is said and done, this is a poem about a woman who has cancer, dies and is then cut up
• The poem is told by an objective and omniscient narrator as is evident from the first line in the poem, which is " Let me tell you a little story".
• Back in the day, I am told that cancer was never refered to directly, only in euthamism. If you had "The Big C", you were going to die and there was nothing you could do about it, so maybe the poem was to inform the population of the danger, because children were never told about cancer and, damnit, you need to know your evil to understand it.
•  Miss Gee has a Freudian dream in which she was the Queen of France and the vicar of Saint Aloysius (the church that she goes to) asks her to dance. There is then a storm and the palace blows down, so she cycles away from a bull with the face of the vicar, charging with lowered horn. So behind the prudish spinster exterior lies repressed sexual feelings for the poor old the vicar, eh? HOLD IT! Miss Gee's bicycle gets slower and slower because of her "back-pedel brake" and the bull was going to overtake. This could be a way of symbolising her cancer.
• Line 51 is a quotation from the lord's prayer; "lead me not into temptation". She could be worried about her love of the vicar.

O what is that sound reading journal

Title analysis:
O what is that sound. Surely there should be a question mark at the end of that title? I'm not one to go around thinking that i'm better than well respected and published poets, though, so there must be a reason that ol' Wystan Hugh Auden decided against a question mark. I suggest that it might be because, despite being asked in the first two lines of the poem ("O what is that sound which so thrills the ear / Down in the valley drumming, drumming?") it isn't really a question that needs asking. The person asking the question already knows the answer, they already know that the sound is "drumming", so why ask the question? I believe this is because the first person wants to keep the second person calm and to a certain extent, themselves calm. These reassuring questions continue until stanza seven.

Storyline synopsis:
Two people see some soldiers "down in the valley" with complete soldier "gear". As the soldiers walk towards them, the first person, who I believe to be the second person's wife (i'll explain why later), keeps asking the second person hopeful questions, such as whether or not it's "the parson they want". When, inevitably, it turns out that the soldiers were actually heading straight for our heroes, the second person tries to run away and the soldiers break the gate and splinter the door with burning eyes. Ruh roh! Raggy!!

Voice:
There are plainly two voices used in this poem, one asking questions and the other answering them. For the first three stanzi, these questions are answered in a reassuring manner starting with "only" as in, when asked "O what is that sound which so thrills the ear / Down in the valley drumming, drumming?" our friend Mr. 2 responds "Only the scarlet soldiers, dear / The soldiers coming." In a reassuring manner. We know that there are both two people and that they are a married couple from stanza eight, where Mrs. 1 (or Mrs. Wife as I shall call her from now on) addresses Mr. 2 (or Mr. Husband as he shall now be known [Mrs. Wife kept her maiden name, OK]), asking him to "stay with" her and whether "the vows" he swore were "deceiving". Another clue that Mr. Husband and Mrs. Wife must indeed be husband and wife is in the responses of Mr. Husband. After his first sentence in every stanza, he gives the term of affection "dear". This, along with Mrs. Wife's mention of their vows makes me assume that the two voices are those of a husband and a wife. The last thing there is to point-out about the voice of this poem is that, in the final stanza, there seems to be only one voice; that of Mrs. Wife. In all eight of the other stanzas, Mrs. Wife first asks a question before it is answered by Mr. Husband, but in this final, ninth stanza, a question is never asked as instead, Mrs. Wife simply describes the soldiers as they enter into the building, having all four lines to herself.

Miscellaneous points: 

• The poem is written in the present tense in the third person and is told solely through speech.
• The rhyme scheme is a simple ABAB affair.
• The poem is subjective, meaning that it is coloured with the emotions of the characters. From the curiosity and reassurance of the first three stanzas to the fright expressed in the last, the whole ballad is quite emotional.
• Yes, this poem is in ballad form with four lines per stanza, or a "quatrain".
• The language used throughout is relatively simple, with very few long words, as if to suggest that Mrs. Wife and Mr. Husband were simple, innocent folk. This illusion is shattered in the penultimate stanza, however, when Mr. Husband leaves and is stomped on by army boots when the body of soldiers enters the building by breaking the door with their eyes aflame. 
• This could be completely wrong, as it is just a guess, but maybe Mr. Husband is an army deserter who the soldiers have come to take to a court marshal? It couldn't be conscription as the the British army only officially started conscripting in modern times from 1916-1919 and from 1936-1960 and we know that the poem can't be set in either of these times because the soldiers are described as being "scarlet", meanting that they must be wearing the red coats of the British army pre-1914.
• The poem features call and response, with the first half of every stanza, excluding nine, being said by one person before the responce of another in the final half.
• The use of "O" at the beggining of every stanza implys romantic poetry, which this certainly isn't. "O" may also be interpreted as an expression of tension

Final thought:

In stanza nine, after "it" (the army? evil? forces beond her control?) breaks into the building, Mrs. Wife speaks of their "boots" and their "eyes". These wouldn't be the most notable things about the bright red coated soldiers, surely? Why are the coats not described whereas the eyes and boots are?