from Auden’s ‘About The House’

Time has taught you


     how much inspiration


your vices brought you,


     what imagination


can owe temptation


     yielded to,


that many a fine
           

     expressive line


would not have existed,


     had you resisted:


as a poet, you


     know this is true,


and though in Kirk


     you sometimes pray


to feel contrite,


     it doesn’t work.


Felix Culpa, you say:


     perhaps you’re right.

 

You hope, yes,


     your books will excuse you,


save you from hell;


     nevertheless,


without looking sad,


     without in any way


seeming to blame


                     (He doesn’t need to,


knowing well


     what a lover of art


like yourself pays heed to),


     God may reduce you


on Judgment Day


                  to tears of shame,


reciting by heart


     the poems you would


have written, had


                  your life been good.

 

W. H. Auden, from the epilogue to his elegy to Louis MacNeice in his book of poetry, About the House(1965), 23.

~ by Michael on March 10, 2009.