Quote

Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

W. H. Auden

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

W. H. Auden
Age: 66 †
Born: 1907
Born: February 21
Died: 1973
Died: September 28
Author
Composer
Essayist
Librettist
Literary Critic
Literary Historian
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
University Teacher
Writer
Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Stills
Follow
Rejoice
Deserts
Still
Poet
Curse
Rapture
Human
Days
Desert
Persuade
Humans
Teach
Healing
Verse
Right
Start
Prison
Farming
Heart
Free
Sing
Verses
Make
Voice
Praise
Fountain
Vineyard
Men
Night
Bottom
Distress
Vineyards

More quotes by W. H. Auden

Image
With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse
W. H. Auden
Image
Every autobiography is concerned with two characters, a Don Quixote, the Ego, and a Sancho Panza, the Self.
W. H. Auden
Image
Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.
W. H. Auden
Image
Men will pay large sums to whores for telling them they are not bores.
W. H. Auden
Image
The most exciting rhythms seem unexpected and complex, the most beautiful melodies simple and inevitable.
W. H. Auden
Image
Far from his illness The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests, The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
W. H. Auden
Image
For time is inches And the heart's changes, Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted.
W. H. Auden
Image
One of the troubles of our times is that we are all, I think, precocious as personalities and backward as characters.
W. H. Auden
Image
Weep for the lives your wishes never led.
W. H. Auden
Image
No good opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden
Image
Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. Auden
Image
We honor founders of these starving cities, Whose honor is the image of our sorrow.
W. H. Auden
Image
It's frightfully important for a writer to be his age, not to be younger or older than he is. One might ask, What should I write at the age of sixty-four, but never, What should I write in 1940.
W. H. Auden
Image
Those who hate to go to bed fear death those who hate to get up fear life.
W. H. Auden
Image
All the rest is silence On the other side of the wall, And the silence ripeness, And the ripeness all.
W. H. Auden
Image
Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
W. H. Auden
Image
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.
W. H. Auden
Image
It is already possible to imagine a society in which the majority of the population, that is to say, its laborers, will have almost as much leisure as in earlier times was enjoyed by the aristocracy. When one recalls how aristocracies in the past actually behaved, the prospect is not cheerful.
W. H. Auden
Image
History marched to the drums of a clear idea...
W. H. Auden
Image
It's usually the stupid people that develop long illnesses. You need more than indolence and selfishness, you need endurance to make a good patient.
W. H. Auden