Question

Identify the title of the poem in which the following lines appear:
"He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint
For in everything he did he served the greater community."

• A. "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"
• B. "The Unknown Citizen"
• C. "In Praise of Limestone"
• D. "On this Island"

Hint:

Signal words for "The Unknown Citizen": Bureau of Statistics, policies, committees, conformity, consumer goods. If a poem sounds like a government file praising a perfectly average man, it's Auden's satire.

Answer 1

The Correct Option is B

Step 1: Recognize voice, theme, and diction.
The excerpt adopts a bureaucratic, report-like voice: "Bureau of Statistics," "official complaint," "reports," "served the greater community." The tone is dry and pseudo-pious ("modern sense of an old-fashioned word"), which is typical of a satirical dossier on an anonymous conformist.

Step 2: Match to Auden's poem.
W. H. Auden's "The Unknown Citizen" (first printed 1939; collected in Another Time, 1940) is a dramatic monologue in the form of a state memorandum about a model citizen, identified only by an alphanumeric code (parodying "The Unknown Soldier"). The poem ironizes modern technocratic culture that reduces a person to compliance metrics and consumer statistics—precisely the elements visible in the quoted lines.

Step 3: Eliminate other options by content and style.
\begin{itemize} \item (A) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats" — an elegy (1939) with lyrical and reflective tones; no bureaucratic voice. \item (C) "In Praise of Limestone" — a meditative landscape poem (c. 1948) on geology, body, and civilization; entirely different imagery. \item (D) "On this Island" — from Auden's early collection; lyric pieces, not the satirical dossier style. \end{itemize} \[ \boxed{\text{Hence, (B) "The Unknown Citizen."}} \]