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
love inspirational dream
A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish.
being-happy lying men
All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.
dance stars ballet-class
Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
book criticism reviews
One cannot review a bad book without showing off.
death men gmos
The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
eye hands bored
The ear tends to be lazy, craves the familiar and is shocked by the unexpected; the eye, on the other hand, tends to be impatient, craves the novel and is bored by repetition.
music art thinking
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
birthday anxiety age
Now is the age of anxiety.
success patience work
Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
medicine medical states
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
exercise answers should
What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
choices hunger
Hunger allows no choice.
love death song
He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
sensual desire wish
Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.