Auden draws on the Afro-Caribbean tradition of calypso music in shaping this poem, borrowing its repetitions and “driving” rhythms as well as its typically loose, freewheeling spirit.
Perhaps it is the musicality of the poem that inspired the famous composer (and Auden’s close friend) Benjamin Brit...
Driver drive faster and make a good run
Down the Springfield Line under the shining sun.
Fly like an aeroplane, don’t pull up short
Till you brake for Grand Central Station, New York.
For there in the middle of the waiting-hall
Should be standing the one that I love best of all.
If he’s not there to meet me when I get to town
I’ll stand on the side-walk with tears rolling down.
For he is the one that I love to look on,
The acme of kindness and perfection.
He presses my hand and he says he loves me,
Which I find an admirable peculiarity.
The woods are bright green on both sides of the line,
The trees have their loves though they’re different from mine.
But the poor fat old banker in the sun-parlour car
Has no one to love him except his cigar.
If I were the Head of the Church or the State,
I’d powder my nose and just tell them to wait.
For love’s more important and powerful than
Even a priest or a politician.
W. H. Auden released Calypso on Mon Jan 01 1940.