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
death philosophical picnics
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
death cities voice
One rational voice is dumb: over a grave The household of Impulse mourns one dearly loved. Sad is Eros, builder of cities, And weeping anarchic Aphrodite.
death children thoughtful
Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
death men gmos
The words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living.
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.
death war men
To save your world you asked this man to die; would this man, could he see you now, ask why?
technique crafts sincerity
Sincerity is technique.
curate full room science shabby
When I find myself in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a room full of dukes.
art culture earn fact money poet practicing sad talking
It's a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
english-poet
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?
voice
All I have is a voice.
pay-the-price people use
People always get what they want. But there is a price for everything. Failures are either those who do not know what they want or are not prepared to pay the price asked them. The price varies from individual to individual. Some get things at bargain-sale prices, others only at famine prices. But it is no use grumbling. Whatever price you are asked, you must pay.
games class action
No human being is innocent, but there is a class of innocent human actions called Games.
change growth religion
We would rather be ruined than changed. We would rather die in our dread than climb the cross of the moment and let our illusions die.