W. H. Auden (1907-73)

That night when joy began
Our narrowest veins to flush,
We waited for the flash
Of morning's levelled gun.

But morning let us pass,
And day by day relief
Outgrows his nervous laugh,
Grown credulous of peace,

As mile by mile is seen
No trespasser's reproach,
And love's best glasses reach
No fields but are his own.That night when joy began


November 1931
["Five Songs" II --Collected Poems (ed. Mendelson)]
Copyright (c) 1976, 1991 The Estate of W. H. Auden

Bibliography

* Bahlke, G. W., The Later Auden (1970)
* Bloomfield, B. C., and Edward Mendelson, W. H. Auden: A Bibliography 1924-1969 (1972)
* Bold, Alan ed., W. H. Auden: The Far Interior (1985)
* Callan, Edward, Auden: A Carnival of Intellect (1983)
* Carpenter, Humphrey, W. H. Auden: A Biography (1981)
* Farnan, D. J., Auden in Love (1984)
* Gingerich, M. E., W. H. Auden: A Reference Guide (1978)
* Greenberg, Herbert, Quest for the Necessary: W. H. Auden and the Dilemma of Divided Consciousness (1968)
* Haffenden, John, ed., W. H. Auden: The Critical Heritage (1983)
* Hecht, Anthony, The Hidden Law: The Poetry of W. H. Auden (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1993)
* Levy, Alan, W. H. Auden: In the Autumn of the Age of Anxiety (1983)
* McDiarmid, Lucy, Saving Civilization: Yeats, Eliot, and Auden between the Wars (1984)
* Mendelson, Edward, The Early Auden (1981)
* Mendelson, Edward, ed., W. H. Auden: Plays (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1988)
* Mendelson, Edward, ed., W. H. Auden: Collected Poems (New York: Vintage Books, 1991)
* Rodway, Allan, Preface to Auden (1984)
* Rowse, A. L., The Poet Auden (1988)
* Wright, G. T., W. H. Auden, rev. ed. (1981)