Bringing together the poems written by Auden between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one (1922-1928), this book gives us a detailed look at the literary personality, development, and preoccupations of a major poet. It also describes crucial unknown aspects of his youth during his years at Gresham's School and at Christ Church, Oxford.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi ABBREVIATIONS xv INTRODUCTION xix TEXTUAL NOTE liii POEMS California 3 A Moment 4 The Blind Lead the Blind 5 Pardon 5 Dawn ('Far into the vast the mists grow dim') 6 On Seeing Some Dutch Pictures 6 Joy 7 Envoi ('You go') 7 Envoi No. 2 ('You go') 8 The Circus 8 Everest 9 Dream 10 February Dawn 11 A Rainy Afternoon 11 The Coming of Love 12 Nightfall ('Cool whisper of the trees') 12 Envoi ('Take up your load and go, lad') 13 To a Toadstool 14 To a Field-mouse 14 To a Small Buddha 15 On a Greek Tomb Relief 15 After Reading Keats' Ode 15 Belief 16 Sonnet ('This world is full of lovely things') 16 A Tale 17 Early Morning Bathing 19 Woods in Rain 20 Appletreewick 21 The Sower 22 The Lost Secret 22 Prayer 23 Autumn 24 The Dragon-fly 25 To a Child in Tears 25 November at Weybourne 26 Finis 28 Bawbcc 29 The Old Lead-mine 29 The Old Mine 31 March Song 31 Alston Moor 32 Skyreholme Mill 33 i. By Day ii. By Night September 34 The Plane Tree 34 Speech 35 Dawn ('On the cold waterfall, the flush of dawn gleams bright') -36 Song ('Past all your knowing') -36 March Winds 37 The Mill 37 Two Triolets 38 The Last Time 38 By the Fire 39 The North 39 We Sat 40 My Lady of the Wood 41 March 42 Envoi ('From the red chimneys smoke climbs slow and straight') 43 Song ('I have a little book') 44 Arthur's Quoit, Dyffryn 44 In the Nursery 45 Christ in Hades 46 Sonnet I ('There was desolate silence on the world') 47 Sonnet II ('It matters not that we shall cease to be') 47 Vision 48 Stone Walls ('Where do they travel to') 49 The Owl 50 Farglow 51 Inn Song 51 The Miner's Wife 52 In a Train 53 Rookhope (Weardale, Summer 1922) 54 The Cat 54 By the Gasworks, Solihull 55 The Robin 55 Early Morning ('Perched on a nettled stump he stands') 56 The Walk 57 Elegy ('Why was it that you gave us no warning') 57 The Old Colliery 59 The Rookery 60 After the Storm 61 The Tarn 62 Before ('I mark not without') 63 Buzzards 64 'There is so much that I can share with you' 65 After the Burial 66 The Traction-engine 67 J. S. Bach 67 The Candies Gutter Low 68 'Though thy rafters are grown rotten' 69 Allendale 70 At Parting ('Under the lamp's exhausted glare') 71 The Engine House 72 'Since the Autumn day' 73 The Pumping Engine, Cashwell 74 'Whenever I see for the first time' 75 The Mail-train, Crewe 76 'So I must go my way' 78 He Revisits the Spot 78 'The dew steams off the thatches' 79 'Now from far eastern wolds, the bay' 79 Nightfall ('As ghosts peer over a bedroom curtain') 80 Skyreholme Mill ('The mill-wheel never seems to tire') 80 Stone Walls ('One almost takes a hedge for granted') 81 'Like other men, when I go past' 82 'The crocus stars the border' 83 Damming Stream 8-3 Sunday Morning 84 A Visit 85 The Hidden Lane (Near Selbrigg, March 1925) 8-5 April in a Town 87 The Mill (Hempstead) 87 Elegy ('A wagtail splutters in the stream') 90 job 91 Richard Jefferies 92 The Sawmill 93 'Below me Ticknall lay but in the light' 94 'The Road's Your Place' 95 Landscape 96 The Dying House 96 Friendship 97 The Sunken Lane 98 Punchard 98 To E. T. 100 The Canal, Froghall 100 Song ('The merriest cuckoo') 101 Sonnet ('April is here but when will Easter come?') 102 Memento Creatoris Tui 103 Earth's Praises 104 Daily Bread 104 The Dark Fiddler 106 Maria hat geholfen 107 Sunshine 108 Autumn Evening 108 The Carter's Funeral 109 Rain 110 Ina Country Churchyard in The Gipsy Girl 112 Frost 113 Flowers and Stationmaster 114 Ploughing 115 Helen 116 'At last, down in the lane' 117 Christmas Eve 118 Trippers I 19 Progress 121 Waste 121 Alone 122 Motherhood 123 On Receiving a Christmas Card 124 The Photograph of a Boy in Costume 124 At the Maison Lyons 125 An Episode 125 Song ('The crocus stars the border') 126 Lead's the Best 127 Felo de se 130 Dethroned 130 April 131 The Letter 132 Chloe to Daphnis in Hyde Park 134 Thomas Prologizes 136 Pride ('Love's specious information') 139 At Parting ('Though Time now tears apart') 140 Portrait 141 Amor Vincit Omnia 142 Yes and No 143 Cinders 143 Thomas Epilogizes 146 Humpty Dumpty 149 Lovers' Lane 153 Bank Holiday 156 Last Bus, Saturday Night 160 Song ('Relation seemed ordained for us') 161 First Meeting 162 Consequences 162 In Due Season 164 Early Morning ('Earth rolls these houses out into the sun') 16.5 Tea-time in November 166 The Happy Tree 167 Winter Afternoon 168 Say Yes! 169 Ballad 169 The Last of the Old Year 171 Before ('Unkempt and furtive the wind crawls') 172 Encounter 174 After 175 Day-dreams of a Tourist I The Evolution of the Dragon 177 Pride ('When Little Claus meets Big Claus in the road') 180 Quique Amavit 181 Easter Monday 183 Narcissus 185 Hodge Looks toward London 188 Aware 191 Bach and the Lady 192 Extract 193 'Out of sight assuredly, not out of mind' 194 The Megalopsych 199 I. 'The sprinkler on the lawn' II. "'The Megalopsych," says Aristotle' III. '"Buzzards!" I heard you say' IV. 'Squatting Euclid drew in sand' V. 'The oboe notes' VI. 'Consider, if you will, how lovers lie' VII. 'Amoeba in the running water' VIII. 'Upon the ridge the mill-sails glow' IX. 'I wake with a dry mouth' 'The sprinkler on the lawn' 205 (a) 'The sprinkler on the lawn' (b) 'Bones wrenched, weak whimper, lids wrinkled, first dazzle known' (c) 'We saw in Spring' (d) 'This peace can last no longer than the storm' (e) "'Buzzards" I heard you say' (f) 'Consider if you will how lovers stand' (g) 'Amoeba in the running water' (h) 'Upon the ridge the mill-sails glow' 'I chose this lean country' 210 'On the frontier at dawn getting down' 214 'No trenchant parting this' 215 'Truly our fathers had the gout' 216 'We, knowing the family history' 217 'Who stands, the crux left of the watershed' 218 'Suppose they met, the inevitable procedure' 220 'The crowing of the cock' 221 'Nor was that final, for about that time' 224 'Deemed this an outpost, I' 225 'Because sap fell away' 227 'The mind to body spoke the whole night through' 229 'From the very first coming down' 231 'The four sat on in the bare room' 232 'The houses rolled into the sun' 234 'The colonel to be shot at dawn' 234 'To-night when a full storm surrounds the house' 235 'The weeks of blizzard over' 236 'Light strives with darkness, right with wrong' 238 'Control of the Passes was. he saw, the key' 239 'Taller to-day, we remember similar evenings' 240 'The spring will come' 241 'The summer quickens grass' 242 '"Grow thin by walking and go inland"' 243 'Some say that handsome raider still at large' 244 'Often the man, alone shut, shall consider' 245 'To throw away the key and walk away' 246 'The Spring unsettles sleeping partnerships' 248 'No, not from this life, not from this life is any' 249 APPENDIX 'Rotation' by 'Mystan Baudom' 251 INDEX 253

"Katherine Bucknell has done an excellent job as an editor... [Auden] would have acknowledged that this is the way scholarship should go about its job."--John Bayley, Times Literary Supplement "Auden's Poems (1930) [is] one of the century's most weirdly original first books. Thanks to Katherine Bucknell, we can now ponder in detail how he got there."--Ian Hamilton, London Review of Books "As loving and meticulous and informing an edition as any writer, young or old, could wish for... Watching Auden invent Audenesque is one of the many joys of this volume."--Valentine Cunningham, Chicago Tribune "Containing more than two hundred poems, the book chronicles Auden's progress from his first verses, written when he was fifteen years old ... As one of the most complete and scrupulous accounts of a major poet's apprenticeship, it offers what amounts to a series of master classes in the development of poetic talent and the acquisition of rhetorical skill."--Poetry

"Auden's early poems form a crucial chapter in the history of his imagination. By collecting and annotating these poems with an elegant scrupulosity, Katherine Bucknell has produced a very valuable addition to Auden studies and an indispensable book for the study of modern poetry."—J. D. McClatchy, Editor, The Yale Review"The evolution of a great poet is abundantly manifest here, in a volume essential not only to lovers of Auden himself, but to all who are intrigued by chrysalid mysteries."—John Fuller, Magdalen College, Oxford

Auden's early poems form a crucial chapter in the history of his imagination. By collecting and annotating these poems with an elegant scrupulosity, Katherine Bucknell has produced a very valuable addition to Auden studies and an indispensable book for the study of modern poetry. -- J. D. McClatchy, Editor, "The Yale Review" The evolution of a great poet is abundantly manifest here, in a volume essential not only to lovers of Auden himself, but to all who are intrigued by chrysalid mysteries. -- John Fuller, Magdalen College, Oxford