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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

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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Literary Critic
Literary Historian
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Jórvík
Wystan Hugh Auden
Wystan Auden
Wystan H Auden
W. H. Wystan Hugh Auden
Turns
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Altered
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Odd
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Blue
Life
Moon

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A verbal art like poetry is reflective it stops to think. Music is immediate, it goes on to become.
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The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
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To my generation no other English poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent. If I do not now turn to him very often, I am eternally grateful to him for the joy he gave me in my youth.
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We were put on this Earth to help others. Why others were put here is beyond me.
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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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My face looks like a wedding-cake left out in the rain.
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An honest self-portrait is extremely rare because a man who has reached the degree of self-consciousness presupposed by the desire to paint his own portrait has almost always also developed an ego-consciousness which paints himself painting himself, and introduces artificial highlights and dramatic shadows.
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To ask the hard question is simple.
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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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You know there are no secrets in America. It's quite different in England, where people think of a secret as a shared relation between two people.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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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 primary function of poetry, as of all the arts, is to make us more aware of ourselves and the world around us. I do not know if such increased awareness makes us more moral or more efficient. I hope not. I think it makes us more human, and I am quite certain it makes us more difficult to deceive.
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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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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.
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We were put on this earth to make things.
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Genealogies are admirable things, provided they do not encourage the curious delusion that some families are older than others.
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All the literati keep An imaginary friend.
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The parlour cars and Pullmans are packed also with scented assassins, salad-eaters who murder on milk.
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Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
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