The major theme, or general message, of this poem is about the nature of human suffering. Auden recognizes that all humans have painful and traumatic experiences that can change the course of their lives, but meanwhile the rest of the world continues on in a mundane way.

The message of "Musée des Beaux Arts" is that all humans suffer and need help at some point. However, when one might need help, there may be no one who can provide it because they are too absorbed in their own life/work/suffering.

Landscape With the Fall of Icarus

Auden's “Musée des Beaux Arts,” written in 1938, is one of the better-known examples of ekphrasis, or poems inspired by artworks, up there with Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and Rilke's “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” Auden's subject is a painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder: “Landscape With the Fall of Icarus.”

What does Auden say about suffering?

About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting For the miraculous birth, there always must be Children who did ...