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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
W. H. Auden
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W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Dreams
Mountains
Drink
Streams
Cold
Ahead
Instead
Rise
Clear
None
Dream
Mountain
May
Except
Whose
Cascading
More quotes by W. H. Auden
Every American poet feels that the whole responsibility for contemporary poetry has fallen upon his shoulders, that he is a literary aristocracy of one.
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Swans in the winter air A white perfection have
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But if a stranger in the train asks me my occupation, I never answer writer for fear that he may go on to ask me what I write, and to answer poetry would embarrass us both, for we both know that nobody can earn a living simply by writing poetry.
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The poet who writes free verse is like Robinson Crusoe on his desert island: he must do all his cooking, laundry and darning for himself. In a few exceptional cases, this manly independence produces something original and impressive, but more often the result is squalor - dirty sheets on the unmade bed and empty bottles on the unswept floor.
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Poetry is the only art people haven't learned to consume like soup.
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Yet no one hears his own remarks as prose.
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A poet feels the impulse to create a work of art when the passive awe provoked by an event is transformed into a desire to express that awe in a rite of worship.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral
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In a world of prayer, we are all equal in the sense that each of us is a unique person, with a unique perspective on the world, a member of a class of one.
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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.
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Fame often makes a writer vain, but seldom makes him proud.
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What answer to the meaning of existence should one require beyond the right to exercise one's gifts?
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To make one, there must be two.
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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Sob, heavy world Sob as you spin, Mantled in mist Remote from the happy.
W. H. Auden
I said earlier that I do not believe an artist's life throws much light upon his works. I do believe, however, that, more often than most people realize, his works may throw light upon his life. An artist with certain imaginative ideas in his head may then involve himself in relationships which are congenial to them.
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Blessed be all metrical rules that forbid automatic responses, force us to have second thoughts, free us from the fetters of Self.
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There are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade's End is one of them.
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Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
W. H. Auden
