<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Musée des Beaux Arts </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">About suffering they were never wrong,</div><div class="">The Old Masters: how well they understood</div><div class="">Its human position; how it takes place</div><div class="">While someone else is eating or opening a window or just</div><div class="">walking dully along;</div><div class="">How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting</div><div class="">For the miraculous birth, there always must be</div><div class="">Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating</div><div class="">On a pond at the edge of the wood:</div><div class="">They never forgot</div><div class="">That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course</div><div class="">Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot</div><div class="">Where the dogs go on with their doggy</div><div class="">life and the torturer’s horse</div><div class="">Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">In Breughel’s <i class="">Icarus</i>, for instance: how everything turns away</div><div class="">Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may</div><div class="">Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,</div><div class="">But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone</div><div class="">As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green</div><div class="">Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen</div><div class="">Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,</div><div class="">had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- W.H. Auden</div><div class=""><br class=""></div></div></body></html>