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 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 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.
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?
love relationship running
Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods.
love fuel excellent
Money cannot buy the fuel of love but is excellent kindling.
love country attitude
We are not commanded (or forbidden) to love our mates, our children, our friends, our country because such affections come naturally to us and are good in themselves, although we may corrupt them. We are commanded to love our neighbor because our natural attitude toward the other is one of either indifference or hostility.
love children believe
God is Love, we are taught as children to believe. But when we first begin to get some inkling of how He loves us, we are repelled; it seems so cold, indeed, not love at all as we understand the word.