422a Auden

Auden 1907-1973

Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was an English-American poet. Auden’s poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in tone, form and content. He is best known for love poems such as “Funeral Blues”, poems on political and …

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I This is the night mail crossing the Border, Bringing the cheque and the postal order, Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, The shop at the corner, the girl next door. Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: The gradient’s against her, but she’s on time. Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder Shovelling white steam …

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As I walked out one evening, Walking down Bristol Street, The crowds upon the pavement Were fields of harvest wheat. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing Under an arch of the railway: “Love has no ending. “I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you Till China and Africa meet, And the …

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Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He is Dead. Put crepe bows round the white necks of the …

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I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on …

Continue reading “In Memory Of W.B. Yeats I. Auden”

  Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know. If we should weep when clowns put on their show, If we should stumble when musicians play, Time will say nothing but I told you so. …

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If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones, Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath, A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle, Each filling a …

Continue reading “In Praise Of Limestone. Auden”

As I listened from a beach-chair in the shade To all the noises that my garden made, It seemed to me only proper that words Should be withheld from vegetables and birds. A robin with no Christian name ran through The Robin-Anthem which was all it knew, And rustling flowers for some third party waited …

Continue reading “Their Lonely Betters. Auden”

If the hill overlooking our city has always been known as Adam’s Grave, only at dusk can you see the recumbent giant, his head turned to the west, his right arm resting for ever on Eve’s haunch, can you learn, from the way he looks up at the scandalous pair, what a citizen really thinks …

Continue reading “Vespers. Horae Canonicae. Auden”

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well That, for all they care, I can go to hell, But on earth indifference is the least We have to dread from man or beast. How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection …

Continue reading “The More Loving One. Auden”

Simultaneously, as soundlessly, Spontaneously, suddenly As, at the vaunt of the dawn, the kind Gates of the body fly open To its world beyond, the gates of the mind, The horn gate and the ivory gate Swing to, swing shut, instantaneously Quell the nocturnal rummage Of its rebellious fronde, ill-favored, Ill-natured and second-rate, Disenfranchised, widowed …

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We, too, had known golden hours When body and soul were in tune, Had danced with our true loves By the light of a full moon, And sat with the wise and good As tongues grew witty and gay Over some noble dish Out of Escoffier; Had felt the intrusive glory Which tears reserve apart, …

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On this day tradition allots to taking stock of our lives, my greetings to all of you, Yeasts, Bacteria, Viruses, Aerobics and Anaerobics: A Very Happy New Year to all for whom my ectoderm is as Middle-Earth to me. For creatures your size I offer a free choice of habitat, so settle yourselves in the …

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(for Oliver Sacks) Spring this year in Austria started off benign,the heavens lucid, the air stable, the aboutsane to all feeders, vegetate or bestial:the deathless minerals looked pleased with their regime,where what is not forbidden is compulsory. Shadows of course there are, Porn-Ads, with-it clergy,and hubby next door has taken to the bottle,but You have …

Continue reading “Talking to myself. Auden.”

Auden returns to a single theme: the reconciliation of the Christian idea that salvation depends on indiscriminate universal love, exploding categories and communities, with the classical idea that only small circles of friends and lovers can console us for the world’s evil. All the essays (and poems, too) might be gathered under a single heading: …

Continue reading “We are always entering paradise but only for a moment. (Gopnik sobre Auden)”