Poem XVII

By WH Auden

This lunar beauty
Has no history
Is complete and early;
If beauty later
Bear any feature
It had a lover
And is another.

This like a dream
Keeps other time
And daytime is
The loss of this;
For time is inches
And the heart’s changes
Where ghost has haunted
Lost and wanted.

But this was never
A ghost’s endeavour
Nor finished this,
Was ghost at ease;
And till it pass
Love shall not near
The sweetness here
Nor sorrow take
His endless look.

Wystan Hugh Auden was born 21st February 1907 and died 29th September 1973. He was a British-American poet whose poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, for the way he was able to engage with subjects of a political, moral, romanic love and religious nature. He masterfully demonstrated a variety in styles. His best known poems are about love. He covered themes of cultural and psychological nature also. He came to wide public attention with his first book ‘Poems’ at the age of twenty-three in 1930.

The following list includes only the books of poems and essays that Auden prepared during his lifetime. For a more complete list, including other works and posthumous editions, see W. H. Auden bibliography.

• The Enchafèd Flood (New York, 1950; London, 1951; prose) (dedicated to Alan Ansen).
• Nones (New York, 1951; London, 1952; poems) (dedicated to Reinhold and Ursula Niebuhr)
• The Shield of Achilles (New York, London, 1955; poems) (won the 1956 National Book Award for Poetry)^[107] (dedicated to Lincoln and Fidelma Kirstein).
• Homage to Clio (New York, London, 1960; poems) (dedicated to E. R. and A. E. Dodds).
• The Dyer’s Hand (New York, 1962; London, 1963; essays) (dedicated to Nevill Coghill).
• About the House (New York, London, 1965; poems) (dedicated to Edmund and Elena Wilson).
• Collected Shorter Poems 1927–1957 (London, 1966; New York, 1967) (dedicated to Christopher Isherwood and Chester Kallman).
• Collected Longer Poems (London, 1968; New York, 1969).
• Secondary Worlds (London, New York, 1969; prose) (dedicated to Valerie Eliot).
• City Without Walls and Other Poems (London, New York, 1969) (dedicated to Peter Heyworth).
• A Certain World: A Commonplace Book (New York, London, 1970; quotations with commentary) (dedicated to Geoffrey Grigson).
• Epistle to a Godson and Other Poems (London, New York, 1972) (dedicated to Orlan Fox).
• Forewords and Afterwords (New York, London, 1973; essays) (dedicated to Hannah Arendt).
• Thank You, Fog: Last Poems (London, New York, 1974) (dedicated to Michael and Marny Yates).

Film scripts and opera libretti

• Coal Face (1935, closing chorus for GPO Film Unit documentary).
• Night Mail (1936, narrative for GPO Film Unit documentary, not published separately except as a programme note).
• Paul Bunyan (1941, libretto for operetta by Benjamin Britten; not published until 1976).
• The Rake’s Progress (1951, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Igor Stravinsky).
• Elegy for Young Lovers (1956, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Hans Werner Henze).
• The Bassarids (1961, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Hans Werner Henze based on The Bacchae of Euripides).
• Runner (1962, documentary film narrative for National Film Board of Canada)
• Love’s Labour’s Lost (1973, with Chester Kallman, libretto for an opera by Nicolas Nabokov, based on Shakespeare’s play).

Musical collaborations

• Our Hunting Fathers (1936, song cycle written for Benjamin Britten)
• Hymn to St Cecilia (1942, choral piece composed by Benjamin Britten)
• An Evening of Elizabethan Verse and its Music (1954 recording with the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, director Noah Greenberg; Auden spoke the verse texts)
• The Play of Daniel (1958, verse narration for a production by the New York Pro Musica Antiqua, director Noah Greenberg)

© Susie J Folmer

Images by Susie J Folmer

References:

Auden, W. H. (2002). Mendel7son, Edward (ed.). Prose, Volume II: 1939–1948. Princeton: Princeton University Press. p. 478. ISBN978-0-691-08935-5. Auden used the phrase “Anglo-American Poets” in 1943, implicitly referring to himself and T. S. Eliot.

Auden, W. H. (1973). Forewords and Afterwords. New York: Random House. p. 69. ISBN 978-0-394-48359-7.

 Smith, Stan, ed. (2004). The Cambridge Companion to W. H. Auden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-82962-5.

Davenport-Hines, Richard (1995). Auden. London: Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-434-17507-9.

Carpenter, Humphrey (1981). W. H. Auden: A Biography. London: George Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0-04-928044-1.