Poems by W H Auden

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The More Loving One

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well

That, for all they care, I can go to hell,

But on earth indifference is the least

We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn

With a passion for us we could not return?

If equal affection cannot be,

Let the more loving one be me.

W H Auden

The Labyrinth

Anthropos apteros for days

Walked whistling round and round the Maze,

Relying happily upon

His temperment for getting on.

The hundredth time he sighted, though,

A bush he left an hour ago,

He halted where four alleys crossed,

And recognized that he was lost.

W H Auden

Three Short Poems

"The underground roads

Are, as the dead prefer them,

Always tortuous."

"When he looked the cave in the eye,

Hercules

Had a moment of doubt."

Leaning out over

The dreadful precipice,

W H Auden

Give me a doctor

Give me a doctor partridge-plump,

Short in the leg and broad in the rump,

An endomorph with gentle hands

Who'll never make absurd demands

That I abandon all my vices

Nor pull a long face in a crisis,

But with a twinkle in his eye

Will tell me that I have to die.

W H Auden

If I Could Tell You

Time will say nothing but I told you so,

Time only knows the price we have to pay;

If I could tell you I would let you know.

If we should weep when clowns put on their show,

If we should stumble when musicians play,

Time will say nothing but I told you so.

There are no fortunes to be told, although,

Because I love you more than I can say,

W H Auden

Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue

Did you ever hear about Cocaine Lil?

She lived in Cocaine town on Cocaine hill,

She had a cocaine dog and a cocaine cat,

They fought all night with a cocaine rat.

She had cocaine hair on her cocaine head.

She had a cocaine dress that was poppy red:

She wore a snowbird hat and sleigh-riding clothes,

On her coat she wore a crimson, cocaine rose.

W H Auden

At Last the Secret is Out

At last the secret is out,

as it always must come in the end,

the delicious story is ripe to tell

to tell to the intimate friend;

over the tea-cups and into the square

the tongues has its desire;

still waters run deep, my dear,

there's never smoke without fire.

W H Auden

The Fall of Rome

(for Cyril Connolly)

The piers are pummelled by the waves;

In a lonely field the rain

Lashes an abandoned train;

Outlaws fill the mountain caves.

Fantastic grow the evening gowns;

Agents of the Fisc pursue

Absconding tax-defaulters through

W H Auden

Old People's Home

All are limitory, but each has her own

nuance of damage. The elite can dress and decent themselves,

are ambulant with a single stick, adroit

to read a book all through, or play the slow movements of

easy sonatas. (Yet, perhaps their very

carnal freedom is their spirit's bane: intelligent

of what has happened and why, they are obnoxious

to a glum beyond tears.) Then come those on wheels, the average

W H Auden

Victor

Victor was a little baby,

Into this world he came;

His father took him on his knee and said:

'Don't dishonour the family name.'

Victor looked up at his father

Looked up with big round eyes:

His father said; 'Victor, my only son,

Don't you ever ever tell lies.'

W H Auden

Night Mail

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.

W H Auden

Here War Is Simple

Here war is simple like a monument:

A telephone is speaking to a man;

Flags on a map assert that troops were sent;

A boy brings milk in bowls. There is a plan

For living men in terror of their lives,

Who thirst at nine who were to thirst at noon,

And can be lost and are, and miss their wives,

And, unlike an idea, can die too soon.

W H Auden