W. H. Auden Quotes

Will it come like a change in the weather?
Will its greeting be courteous or rough?
Will it alter my life altogether?
O tell me the truth about love.

The Three Wiseman:

The weather has been awful,
The countryside is dreary,
Marsh, jungle, rock; and echoes mock,
Calling our hope unlawful;
But a silly song can help along
Yours ever and sincerely:
At least we know for certain that we are three old sinners,
that this journey is much too long, that we want our dinners,
and miss our wives, our books, our dogs,
but have only the vaguest idea why we are what we are.
To discover how to be human now
Is the reason we follow this star.

Before people complain of the obscurity of modern poetry, they should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another; they might also ask themselves how much poetry of any period they can honestly say that they understand.

A god who is both self-sufficient and content to remain so could not interest us enough to raise the question of his existence.

The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

All wishes, whatever their apparent content, have the same and unvarying meaning: "I refuse to be what I am."

You shall love your crooked neighbor with you crooked heart.

I have never, I think, wanted to 'belong' to a group whose interests were not mine, nor have I resented exclusion. Why should thet accept me? All I have ever asked is that others should go their way and let me go mine.

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 to a smile.

Restored! Returned! The lost are borne
On seas of shipwreck home at last:
See! In a fire of praising burns
The dry dumb past, and we
Our life-day long shall part no more.

The Ogre does what ogres can,
Deeds quite impossible for Man,
But one prize is beyond his reach:
The Ogre cannot master speech.

About a subjugated plain,
Among its desperate and slain,
The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
While drivel gushes from his lips.

We are, for all our polish, of little
stature, and, as human lives,
compared with authentic martyrs,
of no account.

To ask the hard question is simple, The simple act of the confused will.

The element of craftsmanship in poetry is obscured by the fact that all men are taught to speak and most to read and write, while very few men are taught to draw or paint or write music.

Oh dear white children, casual as birds,
Playing among the ruined languages,
So small beside their large confusing words.