New Year Letter

New Year Letter

By W. H. Auden
Scribd.com
December 31, 2013

Great masters who have shown mankind,
An order it has yet to find.

What if all pedants say of you,
As personalities be true?

All the more honour to you then,
If weaker than some other men.

You had the courage that survives,
Soiled, shabby, egotistic lives.

If poverty or social unsuccess,
Hunted you out of life to play,
It living in another way;

Yet the live quarry all the same,
Were changed to huntsmen in the game.

And the wild furies of the past,
Tracked to their origins at last.

Trapped in a medium’s artifice,
To charity, delight increase.

Now large, magnificent, and calm,
Your changeless presences disarm.

The sullen generations still,
The fright and fidget of the will.

And to the growing and the weak,
Your final transformations speak.

Saying to dreaming, I am deed.

To striving, Courage, I am deed.

To mourning, I remain, Forgive.

And to becoming, I am live.



Wystan Hugh Auden (February 21, 1907 - September 29, 1973)
was an American poet who is regarded by many critics as one
of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/17929453/wh-AudenNew-Year-
Letter