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If it form the one landscape that we the inconstant ones Are consistently homesick for, this is chiefly Because it dissolves in water.

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
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Consistently
Landscape
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Water
Inconstant
Form
Dissolves
Homesick
Chiefly

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Civilizations should be measured by the degree of diversity attained and the degree of unity retained.
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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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Criticism should be a casual conversation.
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The chances are that, in the course of his lifetime, the major poet will write more bad poems than the minor, simply because major poets write a lot.
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Thou shalt not answer questionnaires Or quizzes upon world affairs, Nor with compliance Take any test. Thou shalt not sit with statisticians nor commit A social science.
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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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The lights must never go out, The music must always play
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Let me see what I wrote so I know what I think
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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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Alone, alone, about the dreadful wood / Of conscious evil runs a lost mankind, / Dreading to find its Father.
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It's better to say, 'I'm suffering,' than to say, 'This landscape is ugly.
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As a rule, it was the pleasure-haters who became unjust.
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Young people, who are still uncertain of their identity, often try on a succession of masks in the hope of finding the one which suits them - the one, in fact, which is not a mask.
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Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm.
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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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Adjectives are the potbelly of poetry.
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Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links, Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks, Under the look of fatigue, the attack of migraine and the sigh There is always another story, there is more than meets the eye.
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Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
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Base words are uttered only by the base And can for such at once be understood But noble platitudes - ah, there's a case Where the most careful scrutiny is needed To tell a voice that's genuinely good From one that's base but merely has succeeded.
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There was still gold and silver in the mountains, And hunger was a more immediate sorrow
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