 The Karst topography of Auden 's birthplace , Yorkshire , also contains limestone . Some readings of the poem have thus taken Auden to be describing his own homeland . Auden makes a connection between the two locales in a letter written from Italy in 1948 to Elizabeth Mayer : " I hadn 't realized how like Italy is to my ' Mutterland , ' the Pennines " . The maternal theme in the poem — 
