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Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

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
Like
Despair
Exchange
Stupor
World
Lies
Flash
Dotted
Lying
Flames
Eros
Show
Points
Negation
Night
Wherever
Affirming
Shows
Dust
Composed
Light
Everywhere
Ironic
Defenceless
May
Messages
Flame
Beleaguered

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Our claim to our own bodies and our world is our catastrophe.
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If we really want to live, we'd better start at once to try.
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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
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If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
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A poem is a verbal artifact which must be as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle.
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There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police We must love one another or die.
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O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.
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Caesar's double-bed is warm As an unimportant clerk Writes i do not like my work On a pink official form.
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Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
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A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.
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The slogan of Hell: Eat or be eaten. The slogan of Heaven: Eat and be eaten.
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God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.
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The Americans are violently oral. That's why in America the mother is all-important and the father has no position at all -- isn't respected in the least. Even the American passion for laxatives can be explained as an oral manifestation. They want to get rid of any unpleasantness taken in through the mouth.
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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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Perhaps there is only one cardinal sin: impatience. Because of impatience we were driven out of Paradise, because of impatience we cannot return.
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The countenances of children, like those of animals, are masks, not faces, for they have not yet developed a significant profile of their own.
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The law cannot forgive, for the law has not been wronged, only broken only persons can be wronged. The law can pardon, but it can only pardon what it has the power to punish.
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.
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It is a sad fact about our culture that a poet can earn much more money writing or talking about his art than he can by practicing it.
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No being can make another one happy.
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