Nones was published by Random House in February 1951 and marks the moment when Auden’s postwar style fully crystallized — after the ambitious but sometimes labored formalism of The Age of Anxiety, he found in Nones a voice that combined theological seriousness with conversational ease, formal mastery with apparent spontaneity. The collection contains “In Praise of Limestone,” which many critics consider Auden’s single finest poem.
The Poems
“In Praise of Limestone” opens the collection and establishes its method. A meditation on limestone landscapes (the Mediterranean karst of Ischia, where Auden spent summers), it is simultaneously a love poem, a theological argument, and a defense of the provisional, the imperfect, the human-scaled against the inhuman grandeur of granite and ice. Its final lines — on being recalled by a limestone landscape to “our Common Prayer” — integrate the personal, the geological, and the religious with an ease that no other modern poet has matched.
“Nones” — the title poem, which would become part of the larger “Horae Canonicae” sequence completed in The Shield of Achilles. Set at the ninth hour (3 PM), the hour of Christ’s death, it meditates on what happens after the irreversible act — after the execution, after the catastrophe — when ordinary life must somehow resume.
“Memorial for the City” — a long poem addressing the ruined cities of postwar Europe, moving from the perspective of a camera (which sees only facts) to the perspective of faith (which sees meaning in destruction).
“Their Lonely Betters” — a light, exquisite lyric about birds and flowers that knows nothing of words or promises: “Let them leave language to their lonely betters / Who count some days and long for certain letters.”
Context
Nones was written during Auden’s period of greatest personal happiness — his summers on Ischia with Chester Kallman, his winters in New York, his professorship, his growing reputation as sage and essayist. The theological concerns that had been developing since his return to Christianity in the early 1940s here achieve full poetic integration. The poems are religious without being devotional, moral without being moralistic.
The title refers to the canonical hour of None (the ninth hour, 3 PM) — part of the liturgical structure that would organize the “Horae Canonicae” sequence. This focus on the quotidian rhythms of prayer and daily life reflects Auden’s mature conviction that poetry’s subject is not the extraordinary but the ordinary, not the heroic gesture but the daily effort of living attentively.
Collecting Nones
First edition (Random House, New York, 1951): Pale green cloth with gold lettering on spine. Dust jacket with abstract design.
Identification points:
- “FIRST PRINTING” stated on copyright page
- Random House colophon on title page
- 81 pages
Market values: Fine copies in dust jacket bring $200–$500. The book had a relatively modest first printing — Auden’s poetry sales in 1951 were respectable but not enormous.
Signed copies: $800–$2,000. Genuinely scarce signed in this period.
First UK edition (Faber and Faber, London, 1952): Published one year later. Blue cloth. Values comparable to the American edition.
“In Praise of Limestone” alone makes this an essential Auden collection — the poem appears on virtually every list of the greatest English poems of the twentieth century, and collectors who care about individual poems (rather than just volumes) specifically seek this first book appearance.