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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.
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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Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
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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.
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Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.
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O plunge your hands in water, Plunge them in up to the wrist Stare, stare in the basin And wonder what you've missed.
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The surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it.
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The center that I cannot find is known to my unconscious mind.
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Acts of injustice done Between the setting and the rising sun In history lie like bones, each one.
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There's only one good test of pornography. Get twelve normal men to read the book, and then ask them, ''Did you get an erection?'' If the answer is ''Yes'' from a majority of the twelve, then the book is pornographic.
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I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky.
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We were put on this earth to make things.
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Those who will not reason, perish in the act. Those who will not act, perish for that reason.
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The way to read a fairy tale is to throw yourself in.
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Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered.
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Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop.
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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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Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
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