Our dear dumb friends

As previously mentioned, I was struck with Auden's poem Secrets in the Great Poets selection and also noted the influence of his voice on Larkin. In fact, Auden was an influence on other poets from the Movement as well, as the similarities between the last stanza of Secrets and the following poem by John Wain shows.

The joke, which we seldom see, is on us:
For only true hearts know how little it matters
What the secret is they keep:
An old, a new, a blue, a borrowed something,
Anything will do for children
Made in God's image and therefore
Not like the others, not like our dear dumb friends
Who, poor things, have nothing to hide,
Not, thank God, like our Father either
From whom no secrets are hid.


Sonnet

An animal with a heart (in the ordinary sense
of the expression) would find the going tough,
no doubt of it. Birds, to get enough
to eat, would have to peck - with no defence
against the bully Conscience - worms they were
sorry for. Dear me! And cats would shed
very hot tears for little mice, quite dead;
digested, indeed; and hedgehogs would pay dear

for beetles crunched while happily at play,
and so on, ad lib. Yes, if they had hearts (in
the ordinary sense) and yet still had to eat
and copulate, despite their sense of sin,
they'd be human, just like us, wouldn't they?
But our hearts beat and ache. Theirs only beat.