#& auden

[apoemaday]

Funeral Blues (Stop All the Clocks)

by W.H. Auden

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone, Silence the pianos and with muffled drum Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead, Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves, Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West, My working week and my Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song; I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun; Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can ever come to any good.

[academic-vampire]

W.H. Auden,

“Funeral Blues”

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.

Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest,

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,

Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;

For nothing now can ever come to any good.

(This has always been one of my favorite poems.)

[lostdeviantartcollages]

blues

[dzgrizzle]

Tolkien was a pantser, not an outliner. Also, Auden wanted to write a book about Christian themes in The Lord of the Rings and Tolkien, who hated allegory (unlike his friend C.S. Lewis), said no. It almost ended their friendship.

[hard-times-paramore]

[hiyutekivigil]

the more loving one, w. h. auden

[thepursuitofunderstanding]

We are lived by powers we pretend to understand.

W.H. Auden

[lilymaddison]

“You romanticize everything, and I’m fine with that. But please don’t romanticize us.”

-- Auden, The Room of Misfits

[eivorxelvhen]

@ars-gratia-auden Location: Eterna & Auden's new forge

Eivor had heard an Elvhen was setting up shop in Eterna, and the Vanguard had decided that while they were there, crossing back down towards Astoria, there would be a good reason to come and swing by. They hailed from Avalon, so Eivor assumed they would have to know a thing or two about telperion. The metal was a magical conduit, and around too much of it, Eivor found himself unable to actually control the surge that would follow. If they couldn't help him, then at least he'd leave with something interesting. "You Auden?"

[theunstablejester]

Transistor's tone exploration video.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

Without art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without science, we should always worship false gods.

- W.H. Auden

[youllalwaysbemyporcelain]

@devilsmenu (for anyone)

Auden had finally started healing from what they had done, so they decided to re open the bike shop. They smile at the person that walks in. "Hello! What can I help you find today?"

[bogusfilth]

Spain

Yesterday all the past. The language of size Spreading to China along the trade-routes; the diffusion Of the counting-frame and the cromlech; Yesterday the shadow-reckoning in the sunny climates.

Yesterday the assessment of insurance by cards, The divination of water; yesterday the invention Of cartwheels and clocks, the taming of Horse. Yesterday the bustling world of the navigators.

Yesterday the abolition of fairies and giants, The fortress like a motionless eagle eyeing the valley, The chapel built in the forest; Yesterday the carving of angels and alarming gargoyles.

The trial of heretics along the columns of stone; Yesterday the theological feuds in the taverns And the miraculous cure at the fountain; Yesterday the Sabbath of witches; but to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the installation of dynamos and turbines, The construction of railways in the colonial desert; Yesterday the classic lecture On the origin of Mankind. But to-day the struggle.

Yesterday the belief in the absolute value of Greek, The fall of the curtain upon the death of a hero; Yesterday the prayer to the sunset And the adoration of madmen. But to-day the struggle.

As the poet whispers, startled among the pines, Or where the loose waterfall sings compact, or upright On the crag by the leaning tower: "O my vision. O send me the luck of the sailor."

And the investigator peers through his instruments At the inhuman provinces, the virile bacillus Or enormous Jupiter finished: "But the lives of my friends. I inquire. I inquire."

And the poor in their fireless lodgings, dropping the sheets Of the evening paper: "Our day is our loss, O show us History the operator, the Organiser, Time the refreshing river."

And the nations combine each cry, invoking the life That shapes the individual belly and orders The private nocturnal terror: "Did you not found the city state of the sponge,

"Raise the vast military empires of the shark And the tiger, establish the robin's plucky canton? Intervene. O descend as a dove or A furious papa or a mild engineer, but descend."

And the life, if it answers at all, replies from the heart And the eyes and the lungs, from the shops and the squares of the city: "O no, I am not the mover; Not to-day, not to you. To you, I'm the

"Yes-man, the bar-companion, the easily-duped; I am whatever you do. I am your vow to be Good, your humorous story. I am your business voice. I am your marriage.

"What's your proposal? To build the just city? I will. I agree. Or is it the suicide pact, the romantic Death? Very well, I accept, for I am your choice, your decision. Yes, I am Spain."

Many have heard it on remote peninsulas, On sleepy plains, in the aberrant fisherman's islands Or the corrupt heart of the city, Have heard and migrated like gulls or the seeds of a flower.

They clung like burrs to the long expresses that lurch Through the unjust lands, through the night, through the alpine tunnel; They floated over the oceans; They walked the passes. All presented their lives.

On that arid square, that fragment nipped off from hot Africa, soldered so crudely to inventive Europe; On that tableland scored by rivers, Our thoughts have bodies; the menacing shapes of our fever

Are precise and alive. For the fears which made us respond To the medicine ad. and the brochure of winter cruises Have become invading battalions; And our faces, the institute-face, the chain-store, the ruin

Are projecting their greed as the firing squad and the bomb. Madrid is the heart. Our moments of tenderness blossom As the ambulance and the sandbag; Our hours of friendship into a people's army.

To-morrow, perhaps the future. The research on fatigue And the movements of packers; the gradual exploring of all the Octaves of radiation; To-morrow the enlarging of consciousness by diet and breathing

To-morrow the rediscovery of romantic love, The photographing of ravens; all the fun under Liberty's masterful shadow; To-morrow the hour of the pageant-master and the musician,

The beautiful roar of the chorus under the dome; To-morrow the exchanging of tips on the breeding of terriers, The eager selection of chairmen By the sudden forest of hands. But to-day the struggle.

To-morrow for the young the poets exploding like bombs, The walks by the lake, the weeks of perfect communion; To-morrow the bicycle races Through the suburbs on summer evenings. But to-day the struggle.

To-day the deliberate increase in the chances of death, The conscious acceptance of guilt in the necessary murder; To-day the expending of powers On the flat ephemeral pamphlet and the boring meeting.

To-day the makeshift consolations: the shared cigarette, The cards in the candlelit barn, and the scraping concert, The masculine jokes; to-day the Fumbled and unsatisfactory embrace before hurting.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

— W.H. Auden, March 1937

[wolflurker]

One fine day in Athia

Another fine day in Athia

[ambrcsezabini]

"Not very scary," he commented lightly. "But you look very smart, cos'. Although if you're meant to be a specific character I'm afraid to say I'm not too sure who that is. Someone from a Jane Austen novel?"

@audenwilkes

[julio-viernes]

Ya estamos casi en el undécimo aniversario de la muerte de Lou Reed, y sube "trayéndolo todo a casa", en un fotograma de la descacharrante y entretenida película "Get Crazy" de 1983. El tema titular del filme lo interpretan Sparks y suenan entre otras "Chop Suey" de Ramones, Marshall Crenshaw, y un "Little Sister" final de Lou delicioso.

En la peli Lou es Auden, un rockero bastante gracioso con un serio bloqueo creativo. Se presenta al personaje en una parodia visual del LP "Bringing it All Back Home" de Bob Dylan de 1965, su inicio eléctrico. Luego Auden pasa la mayor parte del tiempo confinado en la parte trasera de un taxi que recorre Nueva York mientras rasguea la guitarra insistentemente y murmura y tararea todo lo que lo demás dicen en busca de inspiración para sus letras.