Discussion Groups / English Usage / July 2009

Hello:

Re "A Walk After Dark" by Auden, p. 267
shown in full at this link:
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/wystan-hugh-auden/a-walk-after-dark-2/

In:
---
It soothed adolescence a lot
To meet so shameless a stare;
The things I did could not
Be so shocking as they said
If that would still be there
After the shocked were dead.
---
would you agree that "that" in "if that" refers to the
"stare" (presumably of the stars at night)?

In:
----
It's cosier thinking of night
As more an Old People's Home
Than a shed for a faultless machine,
That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone like Imperial Rome
Or myself at seventeen.
---
would you parse it:
"[and THINKING] That the red pre-Cambrian light
Is gone ..."
?

where (according to some commentators) it seems that the red light is
the light emitted by some stars in eons passed, as by now, the time
when it, the light, reaches us, the stars themselves might be gone.
Thus even the stars are faced with their own disappearance; they
aren't for ever.

Also, how would you read "abroad"
in:
--
For the present stalks abroad
Like the past and its wronged again
Whimper and are ignored
--
?
I've settled on:
"at large"
"out there in the open"
but perhaps there are better readings, don't know.

--
Thanks.
Marius Hancu