W. H. Auden
W. H. Auden
Wystan Hugh Audenwas an English poet, who later became an American citizen. He is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues," poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles," poems on cultural and psychological themes such as The Age of Anxiety, and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being" and "Horae Canonicae." He was born in York, grew up in and near Birmingham in a professional middle-class...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth21 February 1907
sadness envy no-love
There is no love; There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
guilt wealth drink
A poor American feels guilty at being poor, but less guilty than an American rentier who has inherited wealth but is doing nothingto increase it; what can the latter do but take to drink and psychoanalysis?
children animal faces
The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
grieving fog world
Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
food cooking murder
Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.
civilization greek conscious
Had Greek civilization never existed ... we would never have become fully conscious.
writing proud fame
Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
character self two
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
writing men dragons
A poet can write about a man slaying a dragon, but not about a man pushing a button that releases a bomb.
responsibility machines bills
There are bills to be paid, machines to keep in repair, Irregular verbs to learn, the Time Being to redeem From insignificance.
hero demise mortals
No hero is mortal till he dies.
ties important fidelity
Sexual fidelity is more important in a homosexual relationship than in any other. In other relationships there are a variety of ties. But here, fidelity is the only bond.
men america special
If we apply the term revolution to what happened in North America between 1776 and 1829, it has a special meaning. Normally, the word describes the process by which man transforms himself from one kind of man, living in one kind of society, with one way of looking at the world, into another kind of man, another society, another conception of life.... The American case is different: it is not a question of the Old Man transforming himself into the New, but of the New Man becoming alive to the fact that he is new, that he has been transformed already without his having realized it.
afterlife water landscape
If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.