W. H. Auden (1907-73) was born in York, England, and educated at Oxford. During the 1930s he was the leader of a left-wing literary group that included Christopher Isherwood and Stephen Spender. With Isherwood he wrote three verse plays. He lived in Germany during the early days of Nazism, and was a stretcher-bearer for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. Auden's first volume of poetry appeared in 1930. Later volumes include Spain (1937), New Year Letter (1941), For the Time Being, a Christmas Oratorio (1945), The Age of Anxiety (1947; Pulitzer Prize), Nones (1951), The Shield of Achilles (1955), Homage to Clio (1960), About the House (1965), Epistle of a Godson (1972), and Thank You, Fog (1974). His other works include the libretto, with his companion Chester Kallman, for Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress (1953); A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (1970); and The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1968). In 1939 Auden moved to the United States and became a citizen in 1946, and beginning that year taught at a number of American colleges and universities. From 1956 to 1961 he was professor of poetry at Oxford. Subsequently he lived in a number of countries, including Italy and Austria, and in 1971 he returned to England. He was awarded the National Medal for Literature in 1967.

Note to the Expanded Edition xiii

Introduction xv

1. Who stands, the crux left of the watershed
2. From the very first coming down
3. Control of the passes was, he saw, the key
4. Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings
5. Watch any day his nonchalant pauses, see
6. Will you turn a deaf ear
7. Sir, no man’s enemy, forgiving all
8. It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens
9. Since you are going to begin to-day
10. Consider this and in our time
11. This lunar beauty
12. To ask the hard question is simple
13. Doom is dark and deeper than any sea-dingle
14. What’s in your mind, my dove, my coney
15. “O where are you going?” said reader to rider
16. Though aware of our rank and alert to obey orders
17. O Love, the interest itself in thoughtless Heaven
18. O what is that sound which so thrills the ear
19. Hearing of harvests rotting in the valleys
20. Out on the lawn I lie in bed
21. A shilling life will give you all the facts
22. Our hunting fathers told the story
23. Easily, my dear, you move, easily your head
24. The Summer holds: upon its glittering lake
25. Now through night’s caressing grip
26. O for doors to be open and an invite with gilded edges
27. Look, stranger, at this island now
28. Now the leaves are falling fast
29. Underneath the abject willow
30. Dear, though the night is gone
31. Fish in the unruffled lakes
32. Casino
33. Funeral Blues
34. Journey to Iceland
35. “O who can ever gaze his fill”
36. Lay your sleeping head, my love
37. Spain
38. Johnny
39. Orpheus
40. Miss Gee
41. Wrapped in a yielding air, beside
42. Dover
43. As I walked out one evening
44. Oxford
45. O Tell Me the Truth About Love
46. In Time of War
47. The Capital
48. Museé des Beaux Arts
49. Epitaph on a Tyrant
50. In Memory of W. B. Yeats
51. Refugee Blues
52. The Unknown Citizen
53. Calypso
54. September 1, 1939
55. Law, say the gardeners, is the sun
56. In Memory of Sigmund Freud
57. Eyes look into the well
58. Lady, weeping at the crossroads
59. Song for St. Cecilia’s Day
60. The Quest
61. But I Can’t
62. In Sickness and in Health
63. Leap Before You Look
64. Jumbled in the common box
65. Atlantis
66. At the Grave of Henry James
67. Mundus et Infans
68. The Lesson
69. The Sea and the Mirror
70. Noon
71. Lament for a Lawgiver
72. Under Which Lyre
73. The Fall of Rome
74. In Praise of Limestone
75. A Household
76. Song
77. A Walk After Dark
78. Memorial for the City
79. Under Sirius
80. Their Lonely Betters
81. Nocturne I
82. Fleet Visit
83. The Shield of Achilles
84. The Willow-Wren and the Stare
85. Epitaph for the Unknown Soldier
86. Nocturne II
87. Bucolics
88. Horae Canonicae
89. Homage to Clio
90. The Old Man’s Road
91. The Song
92. First Things First
93. The More Loving One
94. Friday’s Child
95. Good-bye to the Mezzogiorno
96. Dame Kind
97. You
98. A Change of Air
99. After Reading a Child’s Guide to Modern Physics
100. On the Circuit
101. Et in Arcadia Ego
102. Thanksgiving for a Habitat
103. Epithalamium
104. Amor Loci
105. Profile
106. Fairground
107. River Profile
108. Prologue at Sixty
109. Forty Years On
110. Ode to Terminus
111. August 1968
112. A New Year Greeting
113. Moon Landing
114. Old People’s Home
115. Talking to Myself
116. A Shock
117. A Lullaby
118. Aubade
119. A Thanksgiving
120. Archaeology 3

A Note on the Text
Explanatory Notes
Index of Titles and First Lines