Who’s Who by W H Auden
A shilling life will give you all the facts: How Father beat him, how he ran away, What were the struggles of his youth, what acts Made him the greatest figure of his day; Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night, Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea; Some of the last […]
We’re Late by W H Auden
Clocks cannot tell our time of day For what event to pray Because we have no time, because We have no time until We know what time we fill, Why time is other than time was. Nor can our question satisfy The answer in the statue’s eye: Only the living ask whose brow May wear […]
Warm are the Still and Lucky Miles by W H Auden
Warm are the still and lucky miles, White shores of longing stretch away, A light of recognition fills The whole great day, and bright The tiny world of lovers’ arms. Silence invades the breathing wood Where drowsy limbs a treasure keep, Now greenly falls the learned shade Across the sleeping brows And stirs their secret […]
Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden
Almost happy now, he looked at his estate. An exile making watches glanced up as he passed, And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell Some of the trees he’d planted were progressing well. The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was […]
Underneath an Abject Willow by W H Auden
Underneath an abject willow, Lover, sulk no more: Act from thought should quickly follow. What is thinking for? Your unique and moping station Proves you cold; Stand up and fold Your map of desolation. Bells that toll across the meadows From the sombre spire Toll for these unloving shadows Love does not require. All that […]
This Lunar Beauty by W H Auden
This lunar beauty Has no history Is complete and early, If beauty later Bear any feature It had a lover And is another. This like a dream Keeps other time And daytime is The loss of this, For time is inches And the heart’s changes Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted. But this was […]
They Wondered Why the Fruit had Been Forbidden by W H Auden
They wondered why the fruit had been forbidden: It taught them nothing new. They hid their pride, But did not listen much when they were chidden: They knew exactly what to do outside. They left. Immediately the memory faded Of all they known: they could not understand The dogs now who before had always aided; […]
The Waters by W H Auden
Poet,oracle and wit Like unsuccessful anglers by Th ponds of apperception sit, Baiting with the wrong request The vectors of their interest; At nightfall tell the angler’s lie. With time in tempest everywhere, To rafts of frail assumption cling The saintly and the insincere; Enraged phenonmena bear down In overwhelming waves to drown Both sufferer […]
The Wanderer by W H Auden
Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle. Upon what man it fall In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing, Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face, That he should leave his house, No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women; But ever that man goes Through place-keepers, through forest trees, A stranger to strangers over undried […]
The Two by W H Auden
You are the town and we are the clock. We are the guardians of the gate in the rock. The Two. On your left and on your right In the day and in the night, We are watching you. Wiser not to ask just what has occurred To them who disobeyed our word; To those […]
The Riddle by W H Auden
Underneath the leaves of life, Green on the prodigious tree, In a trance of grief Stand the fallen man and wife: Far away the single stag Banished to a lonely crag Gazes placid out to sea, And from thickets round about Breeding animals look in On Duality, And the birds fly in and out Of […]
The Quest by W H Auden
I. The Door Out of it steps our future, through this door Enigmas, executioners and rules, Her Majesty in a bad temper or A red-nosed Fool who makes a fool of fools. Great persons eye it in the twilight for A past it might so carelessly let in, A widow with a missionary grin, The […]
The Quest XII (Vocation) by W H Auden
Incredulous, he stared at the amused Official writing down his name among Those whose request to suffer was refused. The pen ceased scratching: though he came too late To join the martyrs, there was still a place Among the tempters for a caustic tongue. To test the resolution of the young With tales of the […]
The Novelist by W H Auden
Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone. They can dash forward like hussars: but he Must struggle out of his boyish gift and learn How to be plain and awkward, how to […]
The Labyrinth by W H Auden
Anthropos apteros for days Walked whistling round and round the Maze, Relying happily upon His temperment for getting on. The hundredth time he sighted, though, A bush he left an hour ago, He halted where four alleys crossed, And recognized that he was lost. “Where am I?” Metaphysics says No question can be asked unless […]
The Hidden Law by W H Auden
The Hidden Law does not deny Our laws of probability, But takes the atom and the star And human beings as they are, And answers nothing when we lie. It is the only reason why No government can codify, And verbal definitions mar The Hidden Law. Its utter patience will not try To stop us […]
The Geography of the House by W H Auden
(for Christopher Isherwood) Seated after breakfast In this white-tiled cabin Arabs call the House where Everybody goes, Even melancholics Raise a cheer to Mrs. Nature for the primal Pleasure She bestows. Sex is but a dream to Seventy-and-over, But a joy proposed un- -til we start to shave: Mouth-delight depends on Virtue in the cook, […]
The Dream by W H Auden
Dear, though the night is gone, Its dream still haunts to-day, That brought us to a room Cavernous, lofty as A railway terminus, And crowded in that gloom Were beds, and we in one In a far corner lay. Our whisper woke no clocks, We kissed and I was glad At everything you did, Indifferent […]
The Common Life by W H Auden
A living-room, the catholic area you (Thou, rather) and I may enter without knocking, leave without a bow, confronts each visitor with a style, a secular faith: he compares its dogmas with his, and decides whether he would like to see more of us. (Spotless rooms where nothing’s left lying about chill me, so do […]
Thanksgiving for a Habitat by W H Auden
Nobody I know would like to be buried with a silver cocktail-shaker, a transistor radio and a strangled daily help, or keep his word because of a great-great-grandmother who got laid by a sacred beast. Only a press lord could have built San Simeon: no unearned income can buy us back the gait and gestures […]
Taller To-day by W H Auden
Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings, Walking together in a windless orchard Where the brook runs over the gravel, far from the glacier. Nights come bringing the snow, and the dead howl Under headlands in their windy dwelling Because the Adversary put too easy questions On lonely roads. But happy now, though no nearer each […]
Song Of The Master And Boatswain by W H Auden
At Dirty Dick’s and Sloppy Joe’s We drank our liquor straight, Some went upstairs with Margery, And some, alas, with Kate; And two by two like cat and mouse The homeless played at keeping house. There Wealthy Meg, the Sailor’s Friend, And Marion, cow-eyed, Opened their arms to me but I Refused to step inside; […]
At the Party by W H Auden
Unrhymed, unrhythmical, the chatter goes: Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose. Beneath each topic tunelessly discussed The ground-bass is reciprocal mistrust. The names in fashion shuttling to and fro Yield, when deciphered, messages of woe. You cannot read me like an open book. I’m more myself than you will ever look. Will […]
Old People’s Home by W H Auden
All are limitory, but each has her own nuance of damage. The elite can dress and decent themselves, are ambulant with a single stick, adroit to read a book all through, or play the slow movements of easy sonatas. (Yet, perhaps their very carnal freedom is their spirit’s bane: intelligent of what has happened and […]
O What Is That Sound by W H Auden
O what is that sound which so thrills the ear Down in the valley drumming, drumming? Only the scarlet soldiers, dear, The soldiers coming. O what is that light I see flashing so clear Over the distance brightly, brightly? Only the sun on their weapons, dear, As they step lightly. O what are they doing […]
O Tell Me The Truth About Love by W H Auden
Some say love’s a little boy, And some say it’s a bird, Some say it makes the world go around, Some say that’s absurd, And when I asked the man next-door, Who looked as if he knew, His wife got very cross indeed, And said it wouldn’t do. Does it look like a pair of […]
Nocturne by W H Auden
Now through night’s caressing grip Earth and all her oceans slip, Capes of China slide away From her fingers into day And th’Americas incline Coasts towards her shadow line. Now the ragged vagrants creep Into crooked holes to sleep: Just and unjust, worst and best, Change their places as they rest: Awkward lovers like in […]
A New Age by W H Auden
So an age ended, and its last deliverer died In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe: The sudden shadow of a giant’s enormous calf Would fall no more at dusk across their lawns outside. They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death, […]
Like A Vocation by W H Auden
Not as that dream Napoleon, rumour’s dread and centre, Before who’s riding all the crowds divide, Who dedicates a column and withdraws, Nor as that general favourite and breezy visitor To whom the weather and the ruins mean so much, Nor as any of those who always will be welcome, As luck or history or […]
Let A Florid Music Praise by W H Auden
Let a florid music praise, The flute and the trumpet, Beauty’s conquest of your face: In that land of flesh and bone, Where from citadels on high Her imperial standards fly, Let the hot sun Shine on, shine on. O but the unloved have had power, The weeping and striking, Always: time will bring their […]
Law, Like Love by W H Auden
Law, say the gardeners, is the sun, Law is the one All gardeners obey To-morrow, yesterday, to-day. Law is the wisdom of the old, The impotent grandfathers feebly scold; The grandchildren put out a treble tongue, Law is the senses of the young. Law, says the priest with a priestly look, Expounding to an unpriestly […]
At Last the Secret is Out by W H Auden
At last the secret is out, as it always must come in the end, the delicious story is ripe to tell to tell to the intimate friend; over the tea-cups and into the square the tongues has its desire; still waters run deep, my dear, there’s never smoke without fire. Behind the corpse in the […]
Lady Weeping at the Crossroads by W H Auden
Lady, weeping at the crossroads, Would you meet your love In the twilight with his greyhounds, And the hawk on his glove? Bribe the birds then on the branches, Bribe them to be dumb, Stare the hot sun out of heaven That the night may come. Starless are the nights of travel, Bleak the winter […]
It’s No Use Raising A Shout by W H Auden
It’s no use raising a shout. No, Honey, you can cut that right out. I don’t want any more hugs; Make me some fresh tea, fetch me some rugs. Here am I, here are you:But what does it mean? What are we going to do? A long time ago I told my mother I was […]
In the Time of War, XII by W H Auden
And the age ended, and the last deliverer died. In bed, grown idle and unhappy; they were safe: The sudden shadow of the giant’s enormous calf Would fall no more at dusk across the lawn outside. They slept in peace: in marshes here and there no doubt A sterile dragon lingered to a natural death, […]
In Praise Of Limestone by W H Auden
If it form the one landscape that we, the inconstant ones, Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water. Mark these rounded slopes With their surface fragrance of thyme and, beneath, A secret system of caves and conduits; hear the springs That spurt out everywhere with a chuckle, Each filling a […]
Here War Is Simple by W H Auden
Here war is simple like a monument: A telephone is speaking to a man; Flags on a map assert that troops were sent; A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan For living men in terror of their lives, Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon, And can be lost […]
Give me a doctor by W H Auden
Give me a doctor partridge-plump, Short in the leg and broad in the rump, An endomorph with gentle hands Who’ll never make absurd demands That I abandon all my vices Nor pull a long face in a crisis, But with a twinkle in his eye Will tell me that I have to die. ————— The […]
from The Cave of Making by W H Auden
Who would, for preference, be a bard in an oral culture, obliged at drunken feasts to improvise a eulogy of some beefy illiterate burner, giver of rings, or depend for bread on the moods of a Baroque Prince, expected, like his dwarf, to amuse? After all, it’s rather a privilege amid the affluent traffic to […]
from In Time of War by W H Auden
I So from the years the gifts were showered; each Ran off with his at once into his life: Bee took the politics that make a hive, Fish swam as fish, peach settled into peach. And were successful at the first endeavour; The hour of birth their only time at college, They were content with […]