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How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me.

W. H. Auden

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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
Passion
Stars
Cannot
Like
Burn
Affection
Loving
Equal
Return

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Long ago the accusations had begun, And suddenly knew by whom it had been judged
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Cathedrals, luxury liners laden with souls, Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
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A poet, qua poet, has only one political duty, namely, in his own writing to set an example of the correct use of his mother tongue, which is always being corrupted. When words lose their meaning, physical force takes over.
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By mourning tongues The death of the poet was kept from his poems.
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Murder is unique in that it abolishes the party it injures, so that society has to take the place of the victim and on his behalf demand atonement or grant forgiveness it is the one crime in which society has a direct interest.
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Detective stories have nothing to do with works of art.
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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.
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The only way to spend New Year's Eve is either quietly with friends or in a brothel. Otherwise when the evening ends and people pair off, someone is bound to be left in tears.
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Harrow the house of the dead look shining at New styles of architecture, a change of heart.
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The sky is darkening like a stain Something is going to fall like rain And it won't be flowers
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Clear, unscaleable ahead, Rise the mountains of instead From whose cold, cascading streams None may drink except in dreams
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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
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When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
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No being can make another one happy.
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When I am in the company of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes.
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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.
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
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