The Oxford dictionary of modern quotations (10 page)

1.67 W. H. Auden =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

1907-1973

Some thirty inches from my nose

The frontier of my Person goes,

And all the untilled air between

Is private pagus or demesne.

Stranger, unless with bedroom eyes

I beckon you to fraternize,

Beware of rudely crossing it:

I have no gun, but I can spit.

About the House (1966) "Prologue: the Birth of Architecture"

Sob, heavy world,

Sob as you spin

Mantled in mist, remote from the happy.

Age of Anxiety (1947) p. 104

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you

Till China and Africa meet

And the river jumps over the mountain

And the salmon sing in the street.

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.

Another Time (1940) "As I Walked Out One Evening"

O plunge your hands in water,

Plunge them in up to the wrist;

Stare, stare in the basin

And wonder what you've missed.

The glacier knocks in the cupboard,

The desert sighs in the bed,

And the crack in the tea-cup opens

A lane to the land of the dead.

Another Time (1940) "As I Walked Out One Evening"

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,

And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;

He knew human folly like the back of his hand,

And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;

When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,

And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

Another Time (1940) "Epitaph on a Tyrant"

To us he is no more a person

Now but a whole climate of opinion.

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of Sigmund Freud"

He disappeared in the dead of winter:

The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,

And snow disfigured the public statues;

The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

You were silly like us: your gift survived it all;

The parish of rich women, physical decay,

Yourself; mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,

For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives

In the valley of its saying where executives

Would never want to tamper; it flows south

From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,

Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,

A way of happening, a mouth.

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

Earth, receive an honoured guest;

William Yeats is laid to rest:

Let the Irish vessel lie

Emptied of its poetry.

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

In the nightmare of the dark

All the dogs of Europe bark,

And the living nations wait,

Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace

Stares from every human face,

And the seas of pity lie

Locked and frozen in each eye.

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

In the deserts of the heart

Let the healing fountain start,

In the prison of his days

Teach the free man how to praise.

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully

along.

Another Time (1940) "Mus�e des Beaux Arts"

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

Another Time (1940) "Mus�e des Beaux Arts"

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Another Time (1940) no. 18, p. 43

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

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.

Another Time (1940) "September 1, 1939"

Our researchers into Public Opinion are content

That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;

When there was peace, he was for peace; when there was war, he went.

Another Time (1940) "The Unknown Citizen"

Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:

Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Another Time (1940) "The Unknown Citizen"

All sin tends to be addictive, and the terminal point of addiction is what

is called damnation.

A Certain World (1970) "Hell"

Of course, Behaviourism "works." So does torture. Give me a no-nonsense,

down-to-earth behaviourist, a few drugs, and simple electrical appliances,

and in six months I will have him reciting the Athanasian Creed in public.

A Certain World (1970) "Behaviourism"

A poet's hope: to be,

like some valley cheese,

local, but prized elsewhere.

Collected Poems (1976) p. 639

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 practising it.

Dyer's Hand (1963) foreword

Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of

discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between

accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary

limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"

One cannot review a bad book without showing off.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Reading"

No poet or novelist wishes he were the only one who ever lived, but most

of them wish they were the only one alive, and quite a number fondly

believe their wish has been granted.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Writing"

It takes little talent to see clearly what lies under one's nose, a good

deal of it to know in which direction to point that organ.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Writing"

The true men of action in our time, those who transform the world, are not

the politicians and statesmen, but the scientists. Unfortunately poetry

cannot celebrate them, because their deeds are concerned with things, not

persons, and are, therefore, speechless. When I find myself in the company

of scientists, I feel like a shabby curate who has strayed by mistake into

a drawing room full of dukes.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "The Poet and the City"

The image of myself which I try to create in my own mind in order that may

love myself is very different from the image which I try to create in the

minds of others in order that they may love me.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Hic et Ille"

Almost all of our relationships begin and most of them continue as forms

of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when

one or both parties run out of goods.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Hic et Ille"

Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave

it behind.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "D. H. Lawrence"

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but

among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh.

Dyer's Hand (1963) "Notes on the Comic"

At Dirty Dick's and Sloppy Joe's

We drank our liquor straight,

Some went upstairs with Margery,

And some, alas, with Kate.

For the Time Being (1944) "The Sea and the Mirror"--"Master and

Boatswain"

My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.

For the Time Being (1944) "The Sea and the Mirror"--"Miranda"

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews

Not to be born is the best for man

The second best is a formal order

The dance's pattern, dance while you can.

Dance, dance, for the figure is easy

The tune is catching and will not stop

Dance till the stars come down with the rafters

Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

Letter from Iceland (1937, by Auden and MacNeice) "Letter to William

Coldstream, Esq."

And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching

The apple falling towards England, became aware

Between himself and her of an eternal tie.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 1

Out on the lawn I lie in bed,

Vega conspicuous overhead.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 2

Let the florid music praise,

The flute and the trumpet,

Beauty's conquest of your face:

In that land of flesh and bone,

Where from citadels on high

Her imperial standards fly,

Let the hot sun

Shine on, shine on.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 4

Look, stranger, at this island now

The leaping light for your delight discovers,

Stand stable here

And silent be,

That through the channels of the ear

May wander like a river

The swaying sound of the sea.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 5

O what is that sound which so thrills the ear

Down in the valley drumming, drumming?

Only the scarlet soldiers, dear,

The soldiers coming.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 6

O it's broken the lock and splintered the door,

O it's the gate where they're turning, turning;

Their boots are heavy on the floor

And their eyes are burning.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 6

A shilling life will give you all the facts.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 13

August for the people and their favourite islands.

Daily the steamers sidle up to meet

The effusive welcome of the pier.

Look, Stranger! (1936) no. 30

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same

as what they most want to do.

In Dag Hammarskj�ld Markings (1964) foreword

I see it often since you've been away:

The island, the veranda, and the fruit;

The tiny steamer breaking from the bay;

The literary mornings with its hoot;

Our ugly comic servant; and then you,

Lovely and willing every afternoon.

New Verse Oct. 1933, p. 15

At the far end of the enormous room

An orchestra is playing to the rich.

New Verse Oct. 1933, p. 15

To the man-in-the-street, who, I'm sorry to say,

Is a keen observer of life,

The word "Intellectual" suggests straight away

A man who's untrue to his wife.

New Year Letter (1961) note to line 1277

This is the Night Mail crossing the Border,

Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,

The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:

The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland border,

Shovelling white steam over her shoulder.

Night Mail (1936) in Collected Shorter Poems (1966)

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,

Letters of joy from girl and boy,

Receipted bills and invitations

To inspect new stock or to visit relations,

And applications for situations,

And timid lovers' declarations,

And gossip, gossip from all the nations.

Night Mail (1936) in Collected Shorter Poems (1966)

Altogether elsewhere, vast

Herds of reindeer move across

Miles and miles of golden moss,

Silently and very fast.

Nones (1951) "The Fall of Rome"

Private faces in public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces in private places.

Orators (1932) dedication

Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all

But will his negative inversion, be prodigal:

Send to us power and light, a sovereign touch

Curing the intolerable neutral itch,

The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,

And the distortions of ingrown virginity.

Poems (1930) "Sir, No Man's Enemy"

Harrow the house of the dead; look shining at

New styles of architecture, a change of heart.

Poems (1930) "Sir, No Man's Enemy"

Let us honour if we can

The vertical man

Though we value none

But the horizontal one.

Poems (1930) "To Christopher Isherwood"

To ask the hard question is simple.

Poems (1933) no. 27

This great society is going smash;

They cannot fool us with how fast they go,