from W.H. Auden's 'A Summer Night' (1933)

Now north and south and east and west
Those I love lie down to rest ;
The moon looks on them all,
the healers and the brilliant talkers,
The eccentrics and silent walkers,
The dumpy and the tall.


She climbs the European sky,
Churches and power-stations lie
Alike among earth's fixtures :
Into the galleries she peers
And blankly as a butcher stares
Upon the marvellous pictures.


To gravity attentive, she
Can notice nothing here, though we
Whom hunger does not move,
From gardens where we feel secure
Look up and with a sigh endure
The tyrannies of love :


And, gentle, do not care to know,
Where Poland draws her eastern bow,
What violence is done,
Nor ask what doubtful act allows
Our freedom in this English house,
Our picnics in the sun.