See below Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

See below - Essay Example This is the reason why their poetry are instructive and moralistic. It is not art for art’s sake alone but art as a social tool to teach and reach people, moving them to act and do something for the society and the nation as a whole. The following three poems from Robin Skelton’s Poetry in the Thirties will prove or disprove what Virginia Woolf says about the poetry produced during the 1930s. These are September 1, 1939 by W. H. Auden; Different by Clere Parsons; and Light Breaks Where No Sun Shines by Dylan Thomas. This nine-stanza poem of W.H. Auden is an example of what Virginia Woolf calls a poem of the 1930s that contains â€Å"the pedagogic, the didactic† and â€Å"the loud-speaker strain† calling for â€Å"the creation of a society in which everyone is equal and everyone is free.† The first stanza critiques the system as â€Å"low dishonest decade† where â€Å"The unmentionable odour of death/ Offends the September night.† Feelings of uncertainty, fear, hopelessness and anger dominate this stanza. It is a prologue to the situation that the state or society is at the moment of writing. According to the second stanza, the cause of the dilemma can be explained and be traced back to history. Evil has been committed thus the people reap what they sow: â€Å"Those to whom evil is done/ Do evil in return.† This can also be interpreted as a call to act and fight against the â€Å"evil† and the ones causing this evil. Then in stanza three, the poet/persona plunges right into the main issue: democracy; â€Å"About Democracy,/ And what dictators do.† There has been a neglect and abuse of their duty: â€Å"Analysed all in his book,/ The enlightenment driven away,/ The habit-forming pain,/ Mismanagement and grief:/ We must suffer them all again.† The past is repeated because they have not been good stewards of the freedom they had possessed. They have allowed the dictators to reign over them. Then the