If age, which is certainly Just as wicked as youth, look any wiser, It is only that youth is still able to believe It will get away with anything, while age Knows only too well that it has got away with nothing.
W. H. AudenAmerica has always been a country of amateurs where the professional, that is to say, the man who claims authority as a member of an รฉlite which knows the law in some field or other, is an object of distrust and resentment.
W. H. AudenOne demands two things of a poem. Firstly, it must be a well-made verbal object that does honor to the language in which it is written. Secondly, it must say something significant about a reality common to us all, but perceived from a unique perspective. What the poet says has never been said before, but, once he has said it, his readers recognize its validity for themselves.
W. H. Auden