A Quote by – W. H. Auden

Topic of this Quote:

Author Name:

W. H. Auden

Born As:

Wystan Hugh Auden

Other Names:

Born:

21 Feb 1907

Died:

29 Sep 1973 
                          I sit in one of the dives 
On Fifty-second Street 
Uncertain and afraid 
As the clever hopes expire 
Of a low dishonest decade: 
Waves of anger and fear 
Circulate over the bright 
And darkened lands of the earth, 
Obsessing our private lives; 
The unmentionable odour of death 
Offends the September night. 

Accurate scholarship can 
Unearth the whole offence 
From Luther until now 
That has driven a culture mad, 
Find what occurred at Linz, 
What huge imago made 
A psychopathic god: 
I and the public know 
What all schoolchildren learn, 
Those to whom evil is done 
Do evil in return. 

Exiled Thucydides knew 
All that a speech can say 
About Democracy, 
And what dictators do, 
The elderly rubbish they talk 
To an apathetic grave; 
Analysed all in his book, 
The enlightenment driven away, 
The habit-forming pain, 
Mismanagement and grief: 
We must suffer them all again. 

Into this neutral air 
Where blind skyscrapers use 
Their full height to proclaim 
The strength of Collective Man, 
Each language pours its vain 
Competitive excuse: 
But who can live for long 
In an euphoric dream; 
Out of the mirror they stare, 
Imperialism's face 
And the international wrong. 

Faces along the bar 
Cling to their average day: 
The lights must never go out, 
The music must always play, 
All the conventions conspire 
To make this fort assume 
The furniture of home; 
Lest we should see where we are, 
Lost in a haunted wood, 
Children afraid of the night 
Who have never been happy or good. 

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. 

From the conservative dark 
Into the ethical life 
The dense commuters come, 
Repeating their morning vow; 
'I will be true to the wife, 
I'll concentrate more on my work,' 
And helpless governors wake 
To resume their compulsory game: 
Who can release them now, 
Who can reach the dead, 
Who can speak for the dumb? 

All I have is a voice 
To undo the folded lie, 
The romantic lie in the brain 
Of the sensual man-in-the-street 
And the lie of Authority 
Whose buildings grope the sky: 
There is no such thing as the State 
And no one exists alone; 
Hunger allows no choice 
To the citizen or the police; 
We must love one another or die. 


Defenseless under the night 
Our world in stupor lies; 
Yet, dotted everywhere, 
Ironic points of light 
Flash out wherever the Just 
Exchange their messages: 
May I, composed like them 
Of Eros and of dust, 
Beleaguered by the same 
Negation and despair, 
Show an affirming flame.
                          
September 1, 1939.