Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away. Saw the fish swimming as if they were free: Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay, Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,īut they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews. O we were in his mind, my dear, O we were in his mind. It was Hitler over Europe, saying, "They must die": Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me. "If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread": Went to a committee they offered me a chair īut where shall we go to-day, my dear, but where shall we go to-day?Ĭame to a public meeting the speaker got up and said "If you've got no passport you're officially dead":īut we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive. Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that. In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now. Look in the atlas and you'll find it there: Once we had a country and we thought it fair, Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us. Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes: Auden was a Chancellor of The Academy of American Poets from 1954 to 1973, and divided most of the second half of his life between residences in New York City and Austria. Generally considered the greatest English poet of the twentieth century, his work has exerted a major influence on succeeding generations of poets on both sides of the Atlantic. A prolific writer, Auden was also a noted playwright, librettist, editor, and essayist. His own beliefs changed radically between his youthful career in England, when he was an ardent advocate of socialism and Freudian psychoanalysis, and his later phase in America, when his central preoccupation became Christianity and the theology of modern Protestant theologians. He visited Germany, Iceland, and China, served in the Spanish Civil war, and in 1939 moved to the United States, where he met his lover, Chester Kallman, and became an American citizen. His poetry frequently recounts, literally or metaphorically, a journey or quest, and his travels provided rich material for his verse. He had a remarkable wit, and often mimicked the writing styles of other poets such as Dickinson, W. Ever since, he has been admired for his unsurpassed technical virtuosity and an ability to write poems in nearly every imaginable verse form the incorporation in his work of popular culture, current events, and vernacular speech and also for the vast range of his intellect, which drew easily from an extraordinary variety of literatures, art forms, social and political theories, and scientific and technical information. In 1928, Auden published his first book of verse, and his collection Poems, published in 1930, which established him as the leading voice of a new generation. At Oxford his precocity as a poet was immediately apparent, and he formed lifelong friendships with two fellow writers, Stephen Spender and Christopher Isherwood. As a young man he was influenced by the poetry of Thomas Hardy and Robert Frost, as well as William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Old English verse. Wystan Hugh Auden was born in York, England, in 1907, he moved to Birmingham with his family during his childhood and was later educated at Christ Church, Oxford.
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