View source for Get there if you can and see the land you were once proud to own

<meta
  author="Auden, Wystan Hugh"
  year_of_publication="1928"
  additional_information=""
  genre="Poetry"
  journal=""
  page_range="65-68"
/>
<annotations>
<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
</poem>
</paragraph>



<paragraph keywords="road, affect, road condition">
<poem>
Get there if you can and see the land you once were proud to own 
Though the roads have almost vanished and the expresses never run:
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="infrastructure, bridge, train, car, road, road condition">
<poem>
Smokeless chimneys, damaged bridges, rotting wharves and choked canals, 
Tramlines buckled, smashed trucks lying on their side across the rails; 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="infrastructure, risk">
<poem>
Power-stations locked, deserted, since they drew the boiler fires; 
Pylons fallen or subsiding, trailing dead high-tension wires;
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Head-gears gaunt on grass-grown pit-banks, seams abandoned years ago; 
Drop a stone and listen for its splash in flooded dark below.
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Squeeze into the works through broken windows or through damp-sprung doors; 
See the rotted shafting, see holes gaping in the upper floors;
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="other mobilities, bicycles, car, gender">
<poem>
Where the Sunday lads come talking motor bicycle and girl, 
Smoking cigarettes in chains until their heads are in a whirl.
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Far from there we spent the money, thinking we could well afford, 
While they quietly undersold us with their cheaper trade abroad;
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="car, driving, class, urban, infrastructure, metaphor">
<poem>
At the theatre, playing tennis, driving motor cars we had, 
In our continental villas, mixing cocktails for a cad.
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords=" ">
<poem>
These were boon companions who devised the legends for our tombs, 
These who have betrayed us nicely while we took them to our rooms.
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Newman, Ciddy, Plato, Fronny, Pascal, Bowdler, Baudelaire, 
Doctor Frommer, Mrs Allom, Freud, the Baron, and Flaubert. 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Lured with their compelling logic, charmed with beauty of their verse, 
With their loaded sideboards whispered ‘Better join us, life is worse.’ 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Taught us at the annual camps arranged by the big business men 
‘Sunbathe, pretty till you’re twenty. You shall be our servants then.’ 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Perfect pater. Marvellous mater. Knock the critic down who dares — 
Very well, believe it, copy; till your hair is white as theirs. 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Yours you say were parents to avoid, avoid then if you please 
Do the reverse on all occasion till you catch the same disease. 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
When we asked the way to Heaven, these directed us ahead 
To the padded room, the clinic and the hangman’s little shed. 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Intimate as war-time prisoners in an isolation camp, 
Living month by month together, nervy, famished, lousy, damp. 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
On the sopping esplanade or from our dingy lodgings we 
Stare out dully at the rain which falls for miles into the sea.
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Lawrence, Blake and Homer Lane, once healers in our English land; 
These are dead as iron for ever; these can never hold our hand.
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Lawrence was brought down by smut-hounds, Blake went dotty as he sang, 
Homer Lane was killed in action by the Twickenham Baptist gang. 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Have things gone too far already? Are we done for? Must we wait 
Hearing doom’s approaching footsteps regular down miles of straight; 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Run the whole night through in gumboots, stumble on and gasp for breath, 
Terrors drawing close and closer, winter landscape, fox’s death; 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Or, in friendly fireside circle, sit and listen for the crash 
Meaning that the mob has realized something’s up, and start to smash; 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="engine, driver, car, oil, metaphor, risk">
<poem>
Engine-drivers with their oil-cans, factory girls in overalls 
Blowing sky-high monster stores, destroying intellectuals? 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="road, road condition, driving, risk">
<poem>
Hope and fear are neck and neck: which is it near the course’s end 
Crashes, having lost his nerve; is overtaken on the bend?
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="town, navigation, other mobilities">
<poem>
Shut up talking, charming in the best suits to be had in town, 
Lecturing on navigation while the ship is going down.
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
Drop those priggish ways for ever, stop behaving like a stone: 
Throw the bath-chairs right away, and learn to leave ourselves alone. 
</poem>
</paragraph>


<paragraph keywords="">
<poem>
If we really want to live, we’d better start at once to try; 
If we don’t, it doesn’t matter, but we’d better start to die.
</poem>
</paragraph>



</annotations>