Category W. H. Auden

Fleeing the short-haired mad executives, The sad and useless faces round my home. Up on the mountains of my fear I climb; Above, the breakneck scorching rock, the caves. No col, no v^ater; with excuse concocted. Soon on a lower…

Enter with him These legends. Love; For him assume Each diverse form To legend native, As legend queer; That he may do What these require, Be, Love, like him To legend true.   When he to ease His heart’s disease…

Easily, my dear, you move, easily your head. And easily as through leaves of a photograph album I’m led Through the night s delights and the day s impressions, 2 Past the tall tenements and the trees in the wood.…

Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle. Upon what man it fall In spring, day-wishing flowers appearing, Avalanche sliding, white snow from rock-face, That he should leave his house. No cloud-soft hand can hold him, restraint by women; But…

Did it once issue from the carver’s hand Healthy? Even the earliest conquerors savr The face of a sick ape, a bandaged paw, A Presence in the hot invaded land.   The lion of a tortured stubborn star, It does…

(For Maurice and Gwen Mandelbaum) Dear, all benevolence of fingering lips That does not ask forgiveness is a noise At drunken feasts where Sorrow strips To serve some glittering generalities: Now, more than ever, we distinctly hear The dreadful shuffle…

Can speak of trouble, pressure on men Bom all the time, brought forward into light For warm dark moan. Though heart fears all heart cries for, rebuffs with mortal beat Skyfall, the legs sucked under, adder’s bite. That prize held…

Between attention and attention The first and last decision Is mortal distraction Of earth and air. Further and nearer. The vague wants Of days and nights, And personal error; And the fatigued face, Taking the strain Of the horizontal force…

Before this loved one Was that one and that one A family And history And ghost s adversity Whose pleasing name Was neighbourly shame. Before this last one Was much to be done, Frontiers to cross As clothes grew worse…

A weed from Catholic Europe, it took root Between the yellow mountains and the sea, And bore these gay stone houses like a fruit, And grew on China imperceptibly. Rococo images of Saint and Saviour Promise her gamblers fortunes when…