masters of twentieth-century English poetry, a thoughtful, seriously playful poet, combining extraordinary intelligence and immense craftsmanship.
A note on the texts: Auden heavily revised his poems, sometimes omitting stanzas (as in 'Spain' and 'In Memory of W. B. Yeats') or even entire poems ('Spain' and 'September 1, 1939'). The texts below are reprinted as they first appeared in book form and again in his Selected Poems: A New Edition, ed. Edward Mendelson (1989).
Petition1
Sir, no man's enemy, forgiving all Bu t will his negative inversion, be prodigal: Sen d to us power an d light, a sovereign touch2 Curin g the intolerable neural itch, 5 Th e exhaustion of weaning, the liar's quinsy,0 tonsillitis An d the distortions of ingrown virginity. Prohibit sharply the rehearsed response An d gradually correct the coward's stance; Cove r in time with beam s those in retreat 10 That, spotted, they turn thoug h the reverse were great; Publis h each healer that in city lives Or country houses at the en d of drives; Harro w the house of the dead; look shining at Ne w styles of architecture, a change of heart.
Oct. 1929 1930
On This Island1
Look, stranger, at this island now Th e leaping light for your delight discovers, Stand stable here An d silent be,
1. This title, by which the poem is widely known, ulous cure for disease (cf. 'sovereign' as an adjecis from Auden's later collections. Many of his early tive, meaning 'supreme, all-dominating'). poems first appeared without titles. 1. The title is from Auden's later collections. 2. The king's touch was often regarded as mirac
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LULLABY / 2423
5 That through the channels of the ear Ma y wander like a river Th e swaying sound of the sea.
Here at the small field's ending pause Wher e the chalk wall falls to the foam, and its tall ledges
10 Oppose the pluck An d knock of the tide, An d the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf, and the gull lodges A moment on its sheer side.
15 Far off like floating seeds the ships Diverge on urgent voluntary errands; An d the full view Indeed may enter And move in memory as now these clouds do,
20 That pass the harbour mirror And all the summer through the water saunter.
Nov. 1935 1936
Lullaby1
Lay your sleeping head, my love, Huma n on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from
5 Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me
10 Th e entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds: To lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope In their ordinary swoon,
is Grave the vision Venus? sends Roman goddess of love Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope; While an abstract insight wakes Amon g the glaciers and the rocks
20 Th e hermit's sensual ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass
1. Title from Auden's later collections.
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2424 / W. H. AUDEN
Like vibrations of a bell, And fashionable madmen raise
25 Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing2 of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought,
30 Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of sweetness show 35 Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find the mortal world enough; Noons of dryness see you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass 40 Watched by every human love. Jan.1937 1937,1940
Spain1
Yesterday all the past. The language of size Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion Of the counting-frame and the cromlech;2 Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.
Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards, The divination of water; yesterday the invention Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of Horses. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.
Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants, The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley, The chapel built in the forest; Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles;
The trial of heretics among the columns of stone; Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns And the miraculous cure at the fountain; Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle.
2. At one time the smallest and least valuable Brit-ten while the war was raging this poem appeared ish coin. separately in 1937, the proceeds of its sale going 1. The Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936 to Medical Aid for
