A Credo from W.H. Auden

W.H. Auden (1907-1973). Here are the last five lines of Auden's "September 1, 1939." It's a despairing poem written on the eve of WWII. "Eros" here is a broad, generative, life-force Eros. The antecedent of "them" is "the just" (who act). These lines are a masculine credo of a different sort, a very Jungian take on the world.

May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.