Breughel Paintings

Click on the following three Breughel paintings for larger versions. Then use the back button to return to this page.

Breughel's The Census

Breughel's The Massacre of the Innocents

LINKS

Text & RealVideo: "Musée des Beaux Arts"
Susan Hambleton discusses and recites Auden's poem, at the Favorite Poem Project site. Click on her picture for the audio and video.

AUDEN SET TO MUSIC

The Virtual Street Band, A popular British cyberspace group, has set to music several of Auden’s poems, including "Funeral Blues," "Oh Tell Me the Truth about Love," "Clypso," and "Song IX."  Although their song "Icarus" (and the accompanying Flash movie) does not use the words of  "Musée," it reflects Auden's ideas.  Click here to to listen to the Virtual Street Band's Auden songs.

The Old Masters; how well, they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just
      walking dully along;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.