W. H. Auden's “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” (1939) is one of his most celebrated poems. It enjoys a critical reputation as the finest poetic elegy written in English in the twentieth century, a work that boldly recast the conventions of formal elegiac verse for a disenchanted modern age.
In Memory of W. B. Yeats W. H. Auden
"He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day."