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
hope food cooking
A poet's hope: to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere.
reason
Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
inspirational funny helping-others
We are all here on earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for I don't know.
medicine medical states
Health is the state about which medicine has nothing to say.
new-year years people
The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
poetic poet makers
A poet is a professional maker of verbal objects.
music art thinking
A verbal art like poetry is reflective; it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
sensual desire wish
Desire, even in its wildest tantrums, can neither persuade me it is love nor stop me from wishing it were.
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.
long-ago judgment accusation
Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
sorrow gold mountain
There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
listening prose remarks
Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
curious genealogy delusion
Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
motorcycle tables artifacts
A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.