Musee des Beaux Art After Auden saw the three paintings (The Census at Bethlehem, The Massacre of the Innocents, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus) from Brueghel, he wrote this poem. Theses three paintings are all about the position of human suffering.  The first painting is about the birth of Jesus. Originally, Jesus' birth should be a sacred and happy thing, but there was a king who was afraid that Jesus would overthrow him. So, he claimed to kill all of the newborn babies. The second one is about a king gathering an army to start a war. Many young men were forced to leave their family. And the last one is about a mythology story. Because Icarus was too young and full of ambition, he ignored his father's advice. He flew too high and the wax on his wings was melt by the sun. Finally, he fell into the sea.  In the three paintings, there are some people suffering from death of sever pain. But, on the other hand, there are still someone or something paying no attention to the human suffering. We can understand some people's behavior and they could be forgiven. For instance, maybe the children were too young to know the importance of Jesus' birth, so they kept skating on a pond. The dogs and the torturer's horse are animals, and they could do nothing about the dreadful martyrdom. They only could go on with their life. However, both of the farmer and people on the expensive ship saw the fall of Icarus, but they didn't save his life. Here, the poet used many strong irony, such as "how everything turns away / Quite leisurely from the disaster",  "But for him it was not an important failure", "sailed calmly on". These descriptions show how indifferent the farmer and the rich men were. And I think Brueghel had the same standpoint with Auden. In his painting, we can see that the farmer and the ship occupied almost the whole painting. You probably won't notice Icarus' legs if you don't see it carefully, because the white legs were just a small spot. It's really an intense contrast.  A painter expresses his feeling through his paintings. A poet shows his thoughts through his poems. In "Musee des Beaux Art", the poet presented his point of view by describing three paintings. It's an interesting combination, isn't it? When you read this poem, you'll think about Brueghel's three paintings. When you see Brueghel's paintings, you'll think about Auden's "Musee des Beaux Art". We use art to display our life. Unlike "Ode on a Grecian Urn" showing a certain distance between human and art, from Auden's poem, we can see that no matter what kind of art, verbal art (poems) or plastic art (paintings) are connected tightly with human life.