In Praise of Limestone
Poem by W. H. Auden / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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"In Praise of Limestone" is a poem written by W. H. Auden in Italy in May 1948. Central to his canon and one of Auden's finest poems,[1] it has been the subject of diverse scholarly interpretations. Auden's limestone landscape has been interpreted as an allegory of Mediterranean civilization and of the human body. The poem, sui generis,[2] is not easily classified. As a topographical poem, it describes a landscape and infuses it with meaning. It has been called the "first … postmodern pastoral."[3] In a letter, Auden wrote of limestone and the poem's theme that "that rock creates the only human landscape."[4]
First published in Horizon in July 1948, the poem then appeared in his important 1951 collection Nones. A revised version was published beginning in 1958,[5] and is prominently placed in the last chronological section of Auden's Collected Shorter Poems, 1922–1957 (1966).