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W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Academic Graffiti
Henry Adams
Was mortally afraid of Madams:
In a disorderly house
He sat quiet as a mouse.
 
Mallarmé
Had too much to say:
He could never quite
Leave the paper white.
 
Thomas the Rymer
Was probably a social climber:
He should have known Fairy Queens
Were beyond his means.
 
Paul Valéry
Earned a meagre salary
Walking through the Bois,
Observing his Moi.

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Miranda

My dear one is mine as mirrors are… As the poor and sad are real to th… And the high green hill sits alway… Up jumped the Black Man behind th… Turned a somersault and ran away w…
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Old People's Home

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For what as easy For what thought small, For what is well Because between, To you simply
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Perfection, of a kind, was what he… And the poetry he invented was eas… He knew human folly like the back… And was greatly interested in armi… When he laughed, respectable senat…
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For Friends Only

Ours yet not ours, being set apart As a shrine to friendship, Empty and silent most of the year, This room awaits from you What you alone, as visitor, can br…
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Carry her over the water, And set her down under the tree, Where the culvers white all days a… And the winds from every quarter, Sing agreeably, agreeably, agreeab…
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If it form the one landscape that… Are consistently homesick for, thi… Because it dissolves in water. Ma… With their surface fragrance of th… A secret system of caves and condu…
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She looked over his shoulder For vines and olive trees, Marble well-governed cities And ships upon untamed seas, But there on the shining metal
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On this Island

Look, stranger, on this island now The leaping light for your delight… Stand stable here And silent be, That through the channels of the e…
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He looked in all His wisdom from… Down on that humble boy who kept t… And sent a dove; the dove returned… Youth liked the music, but soon fe… But He had planned such future fo…
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Our earth in 1969 Is not the planet I call mine, The world, I mean, that gives me… To hold off chaos at arm’s length. My Eden landscapes and their clim…
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Trying to understand the words Uttered on all sides by birds, I recognize in what I hear Noises that betoken fear. Thought some of them, I’m certain…
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Here War Is Simple

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Deftly, admiral, cast your fly Into the slow deep hover, Till the wise old trout mistake an… Salt are the deeps that cover The glittering fleets you led,



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