W. H. Auden Quotes about Heart

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You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

You shall love your crooked neighbour, with your crooked heart.

W. H. Auden

Heart, Crooked, Neighbour

W.H. Auden (2016). “Canción de cuna y otros poemas”, p.76, DEBOLS!LLO

If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving be me.

W. H. Auden

Love, Heart, Affection

W. H. Auden, Katherine Bucknell (2003). “Juvenilia: Poems, 1922-1928”, p.41, Princeton University Press

In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start.

W. H. Auden

Healing, Heart, Relaxation

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

A small grove massacred to the last ash, An oak with heart-rot, give away the show: This great society is going to smash; They cannot fool us with how fast they go, How much they cost each other and the gods. A culture is no better than its woods.

W. H. Auden

Heart, Giving, Environmental

Shield of Achilles (1955) "Bucolics"

God may reduce you on Judgment Day to tears of shame, reciting by heart the poems you would have written, had your life been good.

W. H. Auden

Heart, Tears, May

The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life. In theological terms, one might say that all men, left to themselves, become gnostics. They may swagger like peacocks, but in their heart of hearts they all think sex an indignity and wish they could beget themselves on themselves. Hence the aggressive hostility toward women so manifest in most club-car stories.

W. H. Auden

Sex, Heart, Men

And none will hear the postman’s knock Without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

W. H. Auden

Heart, Bears, Forgotten

1936 'Night Mail', written to accompany a documentary by the Post Office Film Unit.

The nightingales are sobbing in The orchards of our mothers, And hearts that we broke long ago Have long been breaking others; Tears are round, the sea is deep: Roll them overboard and sleep.

W. H. Auden

Mother, Heart, Sleep

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

Heart, Men, Errors

"September 1, 1939" l. 59 (1939)

Follow, poet, follow right To the bottom of the night, With your unconstraining voice Still persuade us to rejoice; With the farming of a verse Make a vineyard of the curse, Sing of human unsuccess In a rapture of distress; In the deserts of the heart Let the healing fountain start, In the prison of his days Teach the free man how to praise.

W. H. Auden

Healing, Heart, Night

Another Time (1940) "In Memory of W. B. Yeats"

Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking heart may bless, Find our mortal world enough; Noons of dryness find you fed By the involuntary powers, Nights of insult let you pass Watched by every human love.

W. H. Auden

Dream, Heart, Eye

W. H. Auden, “Lullaby”

The desires of the heart are as crooked as corkscrews Not to be born is the best for man The second best is a formal order The dance's pattern, dance while you can. Dance, dance, for the figure is easy The tune is catching and will not stop Dance till the stars come down from the rafters Dance, dance, dance till you drop.

W. H. Auden

Stars, Heart, Men

Letter from Iceland (1937, by Auden and MacNeice) "Letter to William Coldstream, Esq."