Early Auden
Consider this and in our time
As the hawk sees it or the helmeted airman:
Time’s getting on and I must hurry or I shall miss my train. You’ve got some pretty stiff changes to make. We simply can’t afford any passengers or skrimshankers. I should like to see you make a beginning before I go, now, here. Draw up a list of rotters and slackers, of proscribed persons under headings like this. Committees for municipal or racial improvement – the headmaster. Disbelievers in the occult – the school chaplain. The bogusly cheerful – the games master. The really disgusted – the teacher of modern languages. All these have got to die without issue. Unless my memory fails me there’s a stoke hole under the floor of this hall, the Black Hole we called it in my day. New boys were always put in it. Ah, I see I am right. Well look to it. Quick, guard that door. Stop that man. Good. Now boys hustle them, ready, steady – go.
A forethought of death that we may find ourselves at death
Not helplessly strange to the new conditions.
I have a handsome profile
I’ve been to a great public school
I’ve a little money invested
Then why do I feel such a fool
As if I owned a world that has had its day?
To disintegrate on an instant in the explosion of mania
Or lapse for ever into a classic fatigue.
Of the enemy as philosopher. Talking of intellect-will-sensation as real and separate entities. The Oxford Don: ‘I don’t feel quite happy about pleasure.’
For nothing now can come to any good.
Your beauty’s a completed thing.
The future kissed you, called you king,
Did she? Deceiver!
She’s not in love with you at all
No feat of yours can make her fall,
She will not answer to your call
Like your retriever.
It is time for the destruction of error.
The effect of the enemy is to introduce inert velocities into the system (called by him laws or habits) interfering with organisation. These can only be removed by friction (war). Hence the enemy’s interest in peace societies.
Harrow the houses of the dead; look shining at
New styles of architecture, a change of heart.