The Sunlight on the Garden The sunlight on the garden Hardens and grows cold, We cannot cage the minute Within its nets of gold, When all is told We cannot beg for pardon. Our freedom as free lances Advances towards its end; The earth compels, upon it Sonnets and birds descend; And soon, my friend, We shall have no time for dances. The sky was good for flying Defying the church bells And every evil iron Siren and what it tells: The earth compels, We are dying, Egypt, dying And not expecting pardon, Hardened in heart anew, But glad to have sat under Thunder and rain with you, And grateful too For sunlight on the garden.

Auden who had gained a reputation as the university's foremost poet during the preceding year. The radio play Christopher Columbus produced in 1942 and later publiLouis MacNeiced as a book featured music by William Walton conducted by Adrian Boult and starred Laurence Olivier. Another poorly received collection of poems Visitations was publiLouis MacNeiced in 1957 and the MacNeices bought a holiday home on the Isle of Wight from J.

Auden Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis nicknamed "MacSpaunday" as a group — a name invented by Roy Campbell in his Talking Bronco (1946). Never as overtly (or simplistically) political as some of his contemporaries his work shows a humane opposition to totalitarianism as well as an acute awareness of his Irish roots.