"Musee des Beaux Arts" is a poem about art and suffering, and the ways in which our perspective influences what we care about. Although it's a very different poem than "September 1, 1939," it touches on some of the same themes and was written at about the same time. The Musee des Beaux Arts is a museum in Brussels, Belgium.
To make his point that suffering goes on all around us, yet we pay little attention, Auden describes a painting by Flemish painter Pieter Breughel the elder called "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus." The painting focuses on a plowman in a landscape, and in the lower right hand corner there is a leg sticking out of the corner--Icarus.
Check out some informal, student-friendly commentary on Schmoop.
William Carlos Williams also wrote a poem about this painting with the same title.
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