I am reading a selection of poetry by Auden.\u00a0 There are only a few poems that I like so far, particularly “Too Dear, Too Vague,” “As I Walked Out One Evening,” “Request” (part 17), “Alone,” “A More Loving One,” and some fragments were shorts, such as:<\/p>\n
Private faces in public places
\nare wiser and nicer
\nthan public faces in private places.<\/p>\n
More from part four of “Letter to Lord Byron”:<\/p>\n
Goddess of busy underlings, Normality!
\nWhat murders are committed in thy name!
\nTotalitarian is thy state Reality,
\nReeking of antiseptics and the shame
\nOf faces that all look and feel the same.<\/p>\n
Or from Shorts:<\/p>\n
Babies in their mother’s arms
\nExercise their budding charms
\nOn their fingers and their toes,
\nStriving ever to enclose
\nIn the circle of their will
\nObjects disobedient still,
\nBut the boy comes fast enough
\nTo the limits of self-love,
\nAnd the adult learns what small
\nForces rally at his call.
\nLarge and paramount the State
\nThat will not co-operate
\nWith the Duchy of his mind:
\nAll his lifetime he will find
\nSwollen knee or aching tooth
\nHostile to his quest for truth;
\nNever will his prick belong
\nTo his world of right and wrong,
\nNor its values comprehend
\nWho is foe and who is friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am reading a selection of poetry by Auden.\u00a0 There are only a few poems that I like so far, particularly “Too Dear, Too Vague,” “As I Walked Out One Evening,” “Request” (part 17), “Alone,” “A More Loving One,” and … Continue reading