In July 1969, the New York Times inquired whether the poet W.H. Auden would compose a poem on the significance of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The newspaper planned to print the poem, front page, on July 20th, the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped foot on the Moon. Auden turned down the offer, which was subsequently accepted by Archibald MacLeish. However, within several weeks Auden drafted his own poem about the Moon landing, later published in the New Yorker in September that year.

            Taking a skeptical view of the space race that led up to the Moon landing, Auden writes, "A grand gesture. But what does it period?/What does it osse? We were always adroiter/with objects than lives, and more facile/at courage than kindness...." ("Moon Landing," The Complete Works of W.H. Auden: Poems, Vol. II, 659). Auden additionally shrewdly observes: "from the moment the first flint was flaked this landing was merely a matter of time" ("Moon Landing," p. 659). The proposed paper will explore how the arc of Auden's poem from the Palaeolithic to the Twentieth Century leaves the reader with a hint that such endeavors can possibly lead to nuclear catastrophe.

            As Nina Martyris notes, Auden's father, a physician, inspired his interest in science and technology, particularly Auden's boyhood fascination with "mines, machinery, and microbes." His poems such as "After Reading a Child's Guide to Modern Physics," "Archaeology," or "The Old Man's Road," reflect his varied reading of texts in astronomy, physics, and archaeology. Indeed, Auden commented in his essay "The Poet & The City," "The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are...the scientists.... When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes" (The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays, p. 81). Yet, scant commentary on Auden and the hard sciences has been published, as much of Auden scholarship has focused on his references to sociology, philosophy, and politics.

            Auden's "Moon Landing" is deemed one of his lesser works, as it received only a single mention in his literary executor Edward Mendelson's biography, titled Later Auden. Though Auden was fascinated with the physical sciences, he also cautioned that such science should be used to bring about equality among peoples. This paper will explore Auden's interest, and reading, in astronomy, physics, and archaeology and how he wove those into his poetry and to what purpose.