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A
memorial stone for W.H. Auden, poet and essayist, was unveiled
in Poets' Corner Westminster Abbey on 2nd October 1974. It
adjoins the grave of John Masefield and memorials to George
Eliot and Gerard Manley Hopkins. The stone was unveiled by Sir
John Betjemen and readings were given by Sir John Gielgud. The
address was by Auden's friend Stephen Spender.
The quote on the stone comes from In Memory of W.B. Yeats.
Auden was born in York on 21st February 1907, a son of George,
a doctor, and his wife Constance (Bicknell). The family moved
to the outskirts of Birmingham and he was educated in Surrey
and at Christ Church, Oxford.
He worked for the General Post Office Film Unit for a time and
his verses in Night Mail are well known:
"This is the Night Mail crossing the Border, bringing the
cheque and the postal order, letters for the rich, letters for
the poor, the shop on the corner, the girl next door."
He married Erika Grundgens but only in order that she could
escape from Nazi Germany. During the second world war he spent
his time in America, becoming a United States citizen and
teaching in schools there. In 1955 he was made professor of
poetry at Oxford university. He died in Austria, where he
spent his summers, in September 1973 and was buried at
Kirchstetten.
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