Poems by W H Auden

All Poems Original Poems Translations

« ‹ 1 2 3 4 5 › »

The Unknown Citizen

(To JS/07/M/378/ This Marble Monument

Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be

One against whom there was no official complaint,

And all the reports on his conduct agree

That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a

saint,

For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.

W H Auden

Who's Who

A shilling life will give you all the facts:

How Father beat him, how he ran away,

What were the struggles of his youth, what acts

Made him the greatest figure of his day;

Of how he fought, fished, hunted, worked all night,

Though giddy, climbed new mountains; named a sea;

Some of the last researchers even write

Love made him weep his pints like you and me.

W H Auden

Epitaph On A Tyrant

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.

W H Auden

They Wondered Why the Fruit had Been Forbidden

They wondered why the fruit had been forbidden:

It taught them nothing new. They hid their pride,

But did not listen much when they were chidden:

They knew exactly what to do outside.

They left. Immediately the memory faded

Of all they known: they could not understand

The dogs now who before had always aided;

The stream was dumb with whom they'd always planned.

W H Auden

We Too Had Known Golden Hours

We, too, had known golden hours

When body and soul were in tune,

Had danced with our true loves

By the light of a full moon,

And sat with the wise and good

As tongues grew witty and gay

Over some noble dish

Out of Escoffier;

W H Auden

September 1, 1939

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

W H Auden

A New Year Greeting

On this day tradition allots

to taking stock of our lives,

my greetings to all of you, Yeasts,

Bacteria, Viruses,

Aerobics and Anaerobics:

A Very Happy New Year

to all for whom my ectoderm

is as Middle-Earth to me.

W H Auden

A Walk After Dark

A cloudless night like this

Can set the spirit soaring:

After a tiring day

The clockwork spectacle is

Impressive in a slightly boring

Eighteenth-century way.

It soothed adolescence a lot

To meet so shameless a stare;

W H Auden

We're Late

Clocks cannot tell our time of day

For what event to pray

Because we have no time, because

We have no time until

We know what time we fill,

Why time is other than time was.

Nor can our question satisfy

The answer in the statue's eye:

W H Auden

Petition

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 neural itch,

The exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,

And the distortions of ingrown virginity.

Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response

And gradually correct the coward's stance;

W H Auden

Miranda

My dear one is mine as mirrors are lonely,

As the poor and sad are real to the good king,

And the high green hill sits always by the sea.

Up jumped the Black Man behind the elder tree,

Turned a somersault and ran away waving;

My Dear One is mine as mirrors are lonely.

The Witch gave a squawk; her venomous body

Melted into light as water leaves a spring,

W H Auden

Musee des Beaux Arts

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;

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

W H Auden