W.H. Auden

This morning, we take a closer look at the work of English-American poet Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 – September 29, 1973), noted for his poetic stylistic and technical achievement, engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and variety in tone, form and content.

Auden is best known for love poems such as "Funeral Blues"; poems on political and social themes such as "September 1, 1939" and "The Shield of Achilles"; poems on cultural and psychological themes such as “The Age of Anxiety”; and poems on religious themes such as "For the Time Being"

On This Island

Look, stranger, on this island now
The leaping light for your delight discovers,
Stand stable here
And silent be,
That through the channels of the ear
May wander like a river
The swaying sound of the sea.

Here at a small field’s ending pause
Where the chalk wall falls to the foam and its tall ledges
Oppose the pluck
And knock of the tide,
And the shingle scrambles after the sucking surf,
And a gull lodges
A moment on its sheer side.

Far off like floating seeds the ships
Diverge on urgent voluntary errands,
And this full view
Indeed may enter
And move in memory as now these clouds do,
That pass the harbour mirror
And all the summer through the water saunter.

--W. H. Auden (November 1935) 
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Poem: "W. H. Auden: Collected Poems" Edited by Edward Mendelson, The Centennial Edition, The Modern Library (2007)

Image: "W. H. Auden Portrait", National Portrait Gallery, U.K.