Long Auden Poems

Long Auden Poems. Below are the most popular long Auden by PoetrySoup Members. You can search for long Auden poems by poem length and keyword.


The Grand Masters of the Poetic Arts

Ginsberg
Kerouac
Beat Tap

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde

W. H . Auden

Shakespeare 
Wordsworth 

Sylvia Plath
Virginia Woolf

Jane Austen
The Bronte Sister's 

Authorities of Classic Art
Using ink instead of oils or water to paint a pallet dry

Mixing words into elix
To create book's without pictures 

So as the blind can rejoice as well
In words that bind us all together 

Life , Loss , Longing , Loving
Belonging ,  Betrayal 
Power , Struggle , Death
Family , Foe's 
Verses and Prose

The words that which we daily quote
When called upon to speak
Directly from the heart

While all the while never knowing
They are reciting words from a poem
Or classical works of Art

Of an Author they could not even name
Nor actually in reality know
art


Where's Icarus Now

This poem is based upon 'Landscape with the Fall of Icarus' by Pieter Bruegel
Also inspired by Musée des Beaux Arts by W. H. Auden~

No farmer or merchant felt the sound
That Icarus made when he had drowned
Icarus splashed and kicked and flailed!
Dying, crying to those who sailed
“Help me, help me! Direct your course!”
But those merchants felt no remorse

Icarus gave a final wish
To a man attempting to bait fish
Dozy, the fisher went to sleep
Then Icarus died, and no one weeped

And a farmer who had heard his needs
Felt far too busy planting seeds

Since that painting it’s been years long
Yet I find Bruegel was never wrong
No one ever feels the pain
Another Icarus has attained

So where is Icarus now?

We are an Icarus when out with blues
We read of Icarus in sickening news
We see an Icarus in city streets
Begging, craving for food to eat

And though we all are sick of this,
The world won’t stop for Icarus
Form: Rhyme

Premium Member Timeless, Touchless

The timeless, touchless song of you
this melody and flowing that you are
comes everytime I reach to catch
the strains of love, and see you opening up
blossomsweet
flowerbright
lilypure
in the light and release you find
as slowly you yield yourself
completely to the love and freedom waiting
in the heart of God for you
and in your own precious self;

and here's the reward that's given to me:
like Auden in his journey toward Atlantis,
to be grateful even to glimpse you in a poetic vision
because you, darling soul, are the gift
waiting to be opened by the fingers
of quickening time, only to reveal the beauty you've always promised
in smiles and sighs and virgin hope, and every way you touch the heart.

No wonder the morning and all of us so completely, deeply, and happily love you. 

Christopher M. Swan 2011

Required

Oh final stanza

Title yet required

Men of mice

Oh Sancho Panza

O Wilde

Oh Auden juicy bone clock

Oh vagueties of meaning

Speak unto me in visions
of language only i may understand

Feed me grool as spaghetti soup

Until i plead please Sir,
May i have some more

Fulfill my lesser known desires 
catch me up in Dante Inferno
back draft

Beat , form , flow , glow 

Stroke , poke , needle , prick

Dark , light , day , night

Love , argue , fight , make-up

Hope , faith , belief , positivity

Endless possibilities of kaos
karma reciting mantras

Oh quality 
O revelry

What such sweet penalties await

When writting on muffled drum

Sabre rattling one's pen scratching
furrowed brow over tilted monocle

Whilst drenched in pools of
pensive acidic sweat from
over thinking thought

Ever still enveloped and intoxicated
by the poem's pacing through my
mind racing blindly out of control

While all the while i wishing
this was not my chosen hobby
but merely just a past time

That i could leave behind and
would let up and in so doing
free me from this cursid state
of insomniac wordplay paralysis

That blights my night's and
suppresses me from dreaming

Till all that's left is yawning and
a billion plus random word's that
don't make sense to anyone but me

Premium Member I Was Listening To Levertov Read

i was listening to Levertov read
one of her poems
and as she spoke my mind drifted
her words were of those moments
when manunkind sinks its' teeth
into the bowels of the earth
rapes untold but well known
riches for itself
my mind wandered from the reading
a slow walk thru the cedar forest
of the Levant, now gone
sitting on the ocean's floor
in sunken ships, rotting
sad but it is a fate
commerce will never be denied
as the neolithic exploded
agriculture within that admixture
abundance must be moved
but the most horrifying aspect therein
it paid for a military
the wars began, humanity failed itself
the Garden's tale repeats itself
Denise proves the point
the poets' words are in themselves
moments when the rights and wrongs
suddenly appear in neural pathways
marching from the shadows
as Sherlock Holmes noted
hidden within until life demands a clue
why in Medieval times the adage
following the overthrow of a king
what should we do next, warriors sing
kill the poets comes the cry
which is why they live in no cages
they are free-range natured
to wander the land in freedom
where imagination and inspiration
lie in the most surprising places
neural pathways within
inebriated by atoms surrounding them
a liquor brewed from casks
where creativity floats in pearls
adorned in every jewel 
gifts from the heavens above
where success is the sweetest
the moment it moves from the mortal
into the realms of the immortal
coming full circle
as Auden so well points out
time says nothing more than
i told you so
we were never a paradise lost

   OKC   7/22


Thank You All and a Very Merry Christmas

Just wanted to say a very big thank you to all you amazing poets who took the time to comment 
on my last post ‘Sunny Horizons’
I would have loved to thank each and every one of you individually, but as I said before –
 ‘Time waits for no Man ‘and has a way of running away from me…literally.

To my constant support from the time I joined and still… Demetrios and Silent One - I have learned so much from you
two amazing poets, spiritually and poetically. Thank you for all the help over my poetic journey.
To my dear friend Victor Buhagiar, keep writing, never ever stop. Who can forget your stories, especially your poems 
with the twist - I adored them.
Paul Callus, you also have helped me so much along the way, especially with your attention to detail and your 
encouragement - thank you my dear friend.
To my Love and Light brother Winged Warrior, you are truly amazing. 
I don’t think anyone can write internal rhyme like you do. Keep spreading your light.
To my amazing poetic sisters Cecilia Crasto, Susan Ashley, Connie Wong, Carole Duet and Besma - You ladies made my 
day with your comments, they are worth framing, believe me.
Robert Linley, Vijay, Tom, Arturo, Faraz, Craig Cornish, and July Morning, Martin Williams and Charlie Messina... 
I will always treasure your comments.
Judy Stickles and Akkina, a big thank you to you two lovely ladies. 
Thanks for being in my life
Sunshine Smile, Darren White, Teppo, Chris Green and Word Hobo, the very first poets who welcomed me 
into the Soup and made me feel so welcome…Thank you.
To Heidi Sands, Brandy, Eve, Sunlite, Warren Doll, John Gondolf, Joseph May, Mike Gentle, Michael Wise, Raw Thinker 
and to the poets who have come and gone and had supported me…
Thank you all too.
You are all truly amazing poets, forever let your golden ink flow.

Lastly let me leave you with these parting words …
Keep your passion for poetry always for as W.H.Auden once said
A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language. ? W.H. Auden
Form: Prose

Premium Member Laugh and the world laughs with you

“We are all here on Earth to help others; what on earth the others are here for, I don’t know.” - W. H. Auden

Everyone wants to be a comedian,
some are better at it than others.
The many types of humour range 
from dark & bitter to kind & thought-provoking.

Sometimes there's room for interpretation
where depth of meaning can be found.
Society being an endless source of inspiration,
we won't run out of material any time soon.

Try to find it in your heart to somehow leave your mark
and contribute in positive ways to this world 
that is not as tough as it appears to be ~
below the surface it hurts and in much need of healing.



AP: 3rd place 2025

Premium Member Human Frailty

...Apologies to Heraclitus and W. H. Auden...

We, defeated by the merest things,
in defeat, endure...for now.

No abiding truth in faith:
origins and destinations
we cannot differentiate,
all random, unguided
by any prescient power;
but, not illogical
(there is no illogic.)

We impose all universal order,
influence what subsequently occurs,
to learn, or not, through endless repetition,
endless failure...and we are
but a current iteration,
here for now -- in constant flux,
defeated by the merest things.

Courage and nobility derived
from continued confrontation,
continued endless struggle,
let us show an affirming flame.

Premium Member i donated my own books of poetry to the Oxfam book shop

i took them in
amongst a pile of other glittering monstrosities
the low-pitched liquid consonants 

behind the counter thanked me 
and i ran for the doors 
really went for it

a year went by and they were there
next to Auden and Pam Ayres 
Berryman & Betjeman just down the road

what madness i thought on the way home
and two months later i was in bed, in the dark
listening to the large repertory of Carmen

its immortality is assured by the deft harmonies 
and perfectly judged orchestration
like my collections in the charity shop

covered in dust 
and high levels of vehicular dredge microwaves
waiting for the apocalypse

Premium Member Photographs of Wystan

Above: Wystan in fancy dress
as a beetle -1912


Photographs of Wystan

One of the world's
greatest poets
in a pose, similar
to an Anne Gedde's baby
 
Balancing beetle antennae
his head at an angle
a satin suit padded to
emulate the chest
of  a beetle's,
Spare legs of black velvet
dangling while
he stands upright
feet together, his
expression, militant
Certain in this moment
of his current
resemblance to
a beetle
 
At five years old,
to think he held
potential for such poetry
 

A black and white photo,
frontspiece for "The Life of a Poet"
It appears to have been
snapped just before an
exhalation of his cigarrette.
 
At 65
his face is wrinkled
eye bags reminiscent of
a sharpei puppy
but it is the forehead
that so amazes
with grids as square as graphic paper
as if the poetry
had been mapped out
on his face
I've seen mud, cracking
like that, on  a dried up river bed
 
His fingers are  long, chiselled
and in relaxed contact
with that cigarette as
he holds back a chuckle
with the smoke
 
His air is of  a casual formality- a waistcoat
teamed with with a plaid sports coat
 
In retrospect, here, he had
reached his full potential
I wonder if someone
uttered at his funeral
"Stop all the clocks."

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