Auden and the Muse of History

In "Spain 1937" the early W. H. Auden (1945: 185) famously (and infamously) concluded that "History, to the defeated / May say Alas, but cannot help or pardon."In the "Coda" to one of his final poems, "Archaeology" (1973), the later (or last) Auden (1976: 663) ended with verses much less familiar, though they expressed his by then characteristic