 Auden summered on Ischia , an island in the Gulf of Naples , between 1948 and 1957 ; " In Praise of Limestone " was among the first poems he wrote there . The titular limestone is characteristic of the Mediterranean landscape and is considered an allegory of history in the poem ; the properties of this sedimentary rock invoke the sedentary and domestic picture of Mediterranean culture . The calcium in limestone makes it water @-@ soluble and easily eroded , yet limestone builds up over eons , a stratum at a time , out of organic matter , recalling the stratified history of Mediterranean civilisation . Interpreting the metaphor of ground in poetry , the critic Rainer Emig writes , " The ground [ is ] a perfect symbol of cultural , ethnic , and national identity , a significatory confluence of the historical and the mythical , individual and collective . " 
