W. H. Auden Quotes

We were put on this earth to make things.

The friends who met here and embraced are gone,
Each to his own mistake;

I used to try and concentrate the poem so much that there wasn't a word that wasn't essential. This leads to becoming boring and constipated.

Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what is called damnation.

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.

To be free is often to be lonely.

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the teacup opens
A lane to the land of the dead.

They never forgot That even the most dreadful martyrdom must run its course Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

Lay your sleeping head, my love Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral; But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie: Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

Thousands have lived without love, none without water.

But once in a while the odd thing happens,
Once in a while the dream comes true,
And the whole pattern of life is altered,
Once in a while the moon turns blue.

There's always another story. There's more than meets the eye.

I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.