"Look, stranger, at this island now" by W.H. Auden NOTES

Look, stranger, at this island now by W.H. Auden This poem us a "musical" exercise in which the poet reveals his technical skill by using sound techniques and figurative language to reinforce his description of a scene. It is one of Auden's few poems of natural description, perhaps of the coast in the West Country of England. The first stanza requires the stranger - someone unfamiliar with the island of kingdom of Britain but …

…celebration of the senses of sight and hearing which are used in observing the scene and in re-living the experience. It is written in three stanzas of seven lines. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza is abcdcbd. The line lengths are varied effectively, to suggest changes in the movement of waves or in the duration of a sound or a feeling. Run-on or end-stopped likes are used effectively to convey similar ideas or impressions.