As I Walked Out One Evening - W.H. Auden
A Lyric Ballad Blending Love’s Promise with Time’s Inevitable Toll
Excerpt (under 90 characters, for copyright compliance):
“As I walked out one evening, / Walking down Bristol Street…”
W.H. Auden’s “As I Walked Out One Evening” was first published in the mid-1930s and has since become one of his most frequently anthologized works. The poem adopts a ballad-like structure, complete with a strolling narrator who overhears a lover’s vows. Yet Auden soon introduces a somber note: as the lover proclaims everlasting devotion, the ticking of time—personified through a chiming clock—offers a stark counterpoint.
The poem unfolds through multiple voices: the narrator, the impassioned lover, and the impartial clock. The lover boasts that love will transcend all bounds, making grandiose promises. However, the clock warns that time marches on, inevitably eroding mortal delights. This contrast injects both irony and tenderness: though love can be fervent, no human sentiment can fully outlast or override time.
Stylistically, “As I Walked Out One Evening” blends a sing-song rhythm reminiscent of folksong or nursery rhyme with complex, at times whimsical, imagery. This interplay of a simple, melodic form and sobering message intensifies the poem’s poignancy. Beneath its accessible surface, Auden uses the symbolic clock to highlight life’s fragility—reminding readers that even the most passionate devotion is bounded by mortality.
In the end, the poem neither fully endorses the lover’s eternal optimism nor the clock’s grim fatalism. Instead, it suggests that while love cannot literally conquer time, it remains a vital, deeply human response to the relentless passage of days. That duality—a yearning for timeless devotion set against an unyielding sense of finitude—defines much of Auden’s poetic sensibility and cements “As I Walked Out One Evening” as a quintessential example of his blend of warmth, wit, and metaphysical contemplation.
Key points
1. The poem juxtaposes ardent vows of love with the inescapable nature of time.
2. Auden uses a ballad style and multiple voices—narrator, lover, and clock—to create a layered perspective.
3. The clock’s voice offers a cautionary refrain, reminding readers of love’s limits under mortality.
4. With its melodic form and existential undertones, the poem resonates as both charming and quietly haunting.