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A short class with Sarah and her students. The other ways are under More.
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Count the lines in any stanza of 'Refugee Blues'. How many are there?
Three. So twelve stanzas make thirty-six lines.
Good. Now listen to the ends of the first two lines in a stanza. What do you notice?
They rhyme with each other.
And the third line?
It is longer, and it seems to say the same thing twice, with a word of address in the middle.
That is the blues effect. The speaker states something, speaks to his companion, and then says it again as though he cannot believe it.
Stanza 3 has a tree and a passport. What is the scene?
A yew tree from the speaker's home village that comes into fresh growth each spring, and then the couple's old passports.
What is the idea behind putting them together?
A tree renews itself without help, but a passport needs an authority to renew it. So nature is kinder than the state.
Excellent. And the technique?
Contrast, and symbolism: the tree stands for home and life, and the passport for legal identity.
Now the effect on the reader?
It is gentle but it hurts, because it shows that a piece of paper can end a person's place in the world.
Why does Auden give us three stanzas about animals and not just one?
What does each animal enjoy?
The pet enjoys a warm welcome, the fish enjoy freedom of movement, and the birds enjoy freedom from politics.
So each stanza shows a different thing that people take for granted.
And the refugees have none of the three: no welcome, no movement and no peace.
That is how a pattern builds a message. Three examples are harder to dismiss than one.
twelve tercets, thirty-six lines, each with a rhyming pair followed by a longer closing line of two matching halves.
for each stanza ask what is seen, what it means, which technique is used and what effect it has.
stanzas 1 to 6 remove home, country and papers and show three kinds of refusal by a consul, a committee and a crowd.
stanza 7 names the danger, and stanzas 8 to 10 compare the refugees with a pet, fish and birds that are better off.
stanzas 11 and 12 turn the closed door into a dream and the threat into a hunt, with no rescue.
Scene, idea, technique, effect for stanza 3: the scene is a yew tree and old passports; the idea is that nature renews itself while a document cannot; the technique is contrast and symbolism; the effect is gentle sorrow with a bitter point about the power of the state.
Scene, idea, technique, effect for stanza 8: the scene is a pampered pet dog and a cat welcomed indoors; the idea is that animals receive the hospitality refused to refugees; the technique is irony; the effect is a bitter sense of how little the refugees are valued.
Scene, idea, technique, effect for stanza 12: the scene is soldiers searching a snow-covered plain; the idea is that the threat has become a pursuit with no hiding place; the technique is visual imagery, hyperbole and an open ending; the effect is fear and an unresolved protest.
Stanza one, no room; two, a land closed down; three, a tree and a pass; four, a consul's frown; five, a polite delay; six, the crowd's alarm; seven, the thunder's threat; eight, a pet kept warm; nine, the fish go free; ten, the birds can sing; eleven, doors but none; twelve, the soldiers swing.
Imagine twelve photographs pinned in order on a wall. Under each hangs a caption that says the same thing twice, with a tender word in the middle. As you walk along the wall the pictures grow darker, from a crowded city to a snowy field with soldiers.
Cities, Countries, Cards (passports); Consuls, Committees, Crowds; Thunder; Pet, Fish, Birds; Dream, Danger - one word for each stanza in order.
S.I.T.E. - Scene (what is seen), Idea (what it means), Technique (the device used), Effect (what the reader feels); use it to explain any stanza.
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How is every stanza of the poem built?
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What do the yew tree and the passports show in stanza 3?
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What is ironic in stanza 4?
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Why is the committee's advice in stanza 5 cruel?
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What do stanzas 8 to 10 have in common?
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What happens in stanza 12?
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A stanza of three lines; all twelve stanzas of this poem are tercets.
A pair of rhyming lines; the first two lines of each stanza here form one.
A line or phrase that returns in a poem or song; here the closing line of each stanza echoes itself.
A gap between what is said or expected and what is meant or actually happens, often with a bitter or amusing effect.
An object or image that stands for a larger idea, such as the passport for legal identity.
A figure of speech in which something is named by an item closely linked to it, such as 'bread' for livelihood.
Deliberate exaggeration used for emphasis or effect.
A person or group unfairly blamed for the problems of others.
This lesson walks through 'Refugee Blues' one stanza at a time, explaining what each of the twelve three-line stanzas shows, what it means and how Auden makes it work. It also shows how the stanzas build from homelessness to a hunt, so that you can explain any stanza in an examination.
Every stanza of 'Refugee Blues' has three lines. The first two rhyme as a pair and describe something the speaker sees, hears or experiences, and the third is a longer closing line that makes a short statement, pauses to address the speaker's companion, and then repeats the statement. Read in order, the stanzas show loss of home and country, the failure of passports, a consul who denies a person's existence, a committee that delays, a rally that blames refugees, the threat of Hitler, three comparisons with creatures that are freer than the refugees, a dream of a building with no open door, and a final hunt by soldiers. For each stanza this lesson explains the scene, the meaning and the technique.
The poem has twelve stanzas of three lines each, thirty-six lines in all, so stanza 1 is lines 1 to 3, stanza 2 is lines 4 to 6, and so on up to stanza 12, which is lines 34 to 36. The first two lines of every stanza rhyme as a pair. The third line is the longest and is built from two matching halves with a word of tender address between them, which gives each stanza a heavy, lingering ending like the repeated line of a blues song. Each stanza therefore builds up to its closing line. As you read, ask three questions: What is seen or met? What does it mean? What does the closing line add?
The speaker looks at a vast city whose people are counted in millions and notes that its homes range from grand houses to wretched huts. The closing line states that there is nowhere for the pair. The opening sets up the situation, homelessness in the middle of plenty. The great number makes two people feel tiny, and the word 'souls', used for the inhabitants, reminds us that the speaker is one of those souls too. The tone is calm and almost conversational, and that quietness is the poem's method.
The pair used to have a homeland that they considered lovely. A map of the world still shows it, yet they are barred from going there. Their exile is a political fact and not a geographical one: the place exists on the map but is closed to them. The atlas stands for fixed borders and permanence, and the pair have lost their place within them. The past tense signals both nostalgia and bitterness, and the closing line gives the loss with no comment.
The speaker thinks of a yew tree from the home village that puts out fresh growth every spring, and sets it beside their old passports, which cannot renew themselves. Nature's cycle is placed against a man-made document. The tree is a symbol of belonging, continuity and life; the passport is a symbol of legal identity, and once it lapses a person's official existence can end. Only an authority can renew a passport, and no authority will, so the contrast is both gentle and bitter.
The couple go to a consul, who tells them abruptly that anyone without a passport has, in the eyes of the law, ceased to exist. The speaker answers that they are still alive. The stanza turns a clerk's rule into a paradox: two living people have been declared non-existent on paper. The consul's abruptness is set against the speaker's calm, and the closing line, which asserts that they are alive, is a small act of defiance. The irony shows that a bureaucracy can value a document above a person.
A committee offers the speaker a chair and politeness but advises him to come back after a year. The speaker asks where they are to go today. The cruelty here is courtesy: the committee is kind in manner and useless in effect. A year means little to an office, but to people in danger it can mean everything. The closing question gets no answer, and the contrast of time scales, a year against today, is the point of the stanza.
At a public gathering a speaker warns that if refugees are let in they will take the community's bread. The pair realise that he is talking about them. 'Bread' is a figure of speech for food, jobs and livelihood. The stanza shows how economic fear is turned against strangers and how a whole group can be blamed as a single threat. The most painful moment is recognition: the speaker is no longer an observer, because he is the subject of the talk.
The speaker takes a far-off rumble overhead for a storm, but it is the voice of Hitler, marking people like them for death, and the pair are in the dictator's thoughts. The poem moves from indifference to open threat. The voice is identified with thunder, a metaphor that makes the dictator's power seem like a force of nature that nobody can argue with. The poem names a real historical figure here, and its closing line makes the danger personal, because for him they are not just an abstraction but the targets.
The speaker sees a pet dog in clothes and a cat that a household lets indoors, and the closing line notes that these animals do not belong to the persecuted group. The irony is sharp: animals receive the hospitality that human refugees are denied. The homely details of clothes and an open door make the comfort seem close and ordinary, and so make the refugees' exclusion harder to bear. This stanza begins a run of three comparisons with creatures.
The couple stand at a harbour and watch fish swimming freely only a short distance away. A harbour is a place of departure, yet they cannot leave, while the fish move at will. Fish stand for freedom of movement. The nearness of the water makes the freedom feel cruelly close, and the closing line measures the distance, small but impossible to cross.
In a wood the speaker watches birds that sing without a care, untouched by the politics that torments people, since they are not human. Birds symbolise carefree freedom. The sly reference to politicians blames politics for human suffering, and the closing line draws the bitter conclusion that to be free of such misery one would have to be something other than human. The song is an auditory image set against the silence of the refugees.
The speaker dreams of an immense building with levels, windows and doorways in endless number, yet none of them belongs to the pair. The building stands for the world of institutions and states, with a great many doors but none that belongs to them, and some readers also take it as an image of the couple's own sense of exile. The exaggerated number is hyperbole, which stresses the injustice: there is plenty of space and the refugees are given none of it. As a dream it also shows that the fear has entered the speaker's sleep.
The speaker finds himself on a wide, open plain under snow, where great numbers of soldiers move back and forth, searching for the couple. The poem reaches its climax: the distant thunder of stanza 7 has become a visible hunt. The empty plain offers no cover, and the snow adds cold and exposure. The poem stops here with no rescue, and the repeated closing line now echoes the hunt itself.
The twelve stanzas run in a pattern. Stanzas 1 to 3 take away home, country and papers. Stanzas 4 to 6 show three kinds of rejection. Stanza 7 gives the threat a voice. Stanzas 8 to 10 compare the refugees with creatures that are better off than they are. Stanzas 11 and 12 turn the fear into a dream and then into a pursuit. Each step is darker than the last.