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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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Autres oeuvres par W. H. Auden...
This is the night mail

This is the night mail crossing th… Bringing the cheque and the postal… Letters for the rich, letters for… The shop at the corner, the girl n… Pulling up Beattock, a steady cli…
The Unknown Citizen

He was found by the Bureau of Sta… One against whom there was no offi… And all the reports on his conduct… That, in the modern sense of an ol… saint,
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Mr. and Mrs. Andrews, by Thomas Gainsborough
Carry Her Over the Water

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…
Cocaine Lil and Morphine Sue

Did you ever hear about Cocaine L… She lived in Cocaine town on Coca… She had a cocaine dog and a cocain… They fought all night with a cocai… She had cocaine hair on her cocain…
August 1968

The Ogre does what ogres can, Deeds quite impossible for Man, But one prize is beyond his reach, The Ogre cannot master Speech: About a subjugated plain,
Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, by Pieter Brueghel el Viejo
Musee Des Beaux Arts

About suffering they were never wr… The Old Masters; how well, they u… Its human position; how it takes p… While someone else is eating or op… How, when the aged are reverently,…
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Chaucer at the Court of Edward III, by Ford Madox Brown
Ode to the Medieval Poets

Chaucer, Langland, Douglas, Dunb… brother Anons, how on earth did yo… without anaesthetics or plumbing, in daily peril from witches, warlo… lepers, The Holy Office, foreign…
Friday's Child

He told us we were free to choose But, children as we were, we thoug… “Paternal Love will only use Force in the last resort On those too bumptious to repent.”
In Memory of Sigmund Freud

When there are so many we shall ha… when grief has been made so public… to the critique of a whole epoch the frailty of our conscience and… of whom shall we speak? For every…
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Military funeral, by Isaac Israëls
Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the t… Prevent the dog from barking with… Silence the pianos and with muffle… Bring out the coffin, let the mour… Let aeroplanes circle moaning over…
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In Praise of Limestone

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…
Ruffed Grouse, by John James Audubon
Bird-Language

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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Voltaire at Ferney

Perfectly happy now, he looked at… An exile making watches glanced up… And went on working; where a hospi… A joiner touched his cap; an agent… Some of the trees he’d planted wer…
Victor

Victor was a little baby, Into this world he came; His father took him on his knee an… 'Don’t dishonour the family name.' Victor looked up at his father
Taller To-day

Taller to-day, we remember similar… Walking together in a windless orc… Where the brook runs over the grav… Nights come bringing the snow, and… Under headlands in their windy dwe…



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