Collected Poems Quotes

“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.”
― W. H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Evil is unspectacular and always human,
And shares our bed and eats at our own table ....”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.”
― W. H. Auden, Collected Poems

“I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Base words are uttered only by the base
And can for such at once be understood;
But noble platitudes — ah, there's a case
Where the most careful scrutiny is needed
To tell a voice that's genuinely good
From one that's base but merely has succeeded.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Happy the hare at morning, for she cannot read
The hunter's waking thoughts.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have;
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.”
― W. H. Auden, Collected Poems

“Were all stars to disappear and die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.
—W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“What mad Nijinsky wrote/ About Diaghilev/ Is true of the normal heart;/ For the error bred in the bone/ Of each woman and each man/ Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love/ But to be loved alone.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“What living occasion can,
Be just to the absent?”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“How insufficient is
Touch,”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems

“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.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his
generation,
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.”
― W.H. Auden, Collected Poems