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
mean pleasure guides
Pleasure is by no means an infallible critical guide, but it is the least fallible.
dog missing religion
Dogmatic theological statements are neither logical propositions nor poetic utterances. They are ''shaggy dog'' stories; they have a point, but he who tries too hard to get it will miss it.
self enough existence
A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.
poetry poet humiliated
You will be a poet because you will always be humiliated.
winter white swans
Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
work writing clerks
Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
fear children night
Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
time heart ghost
For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
pain grief suffering
The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.
long-ago judgment accusation
Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
fear children worry
the child unlucky in his little State, Some hearth where freedom is excluded, A hive whose honey is fear and worry, Feels calmer now and somehow assured of escape
truth important want
The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.
hope fear clever
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade
art people saint
It's impossible to represent a saint [in Art]. It becomes boring. Perhaps because he is, like the Saturday Evening Post people, inthe position of having almost infinitely free will.