WH Auden’s ‘The Age of Anxiety’ | WH Auden | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/apr/10/auden-age-anxiety-leonard-bernstein

It is in “September 1st, 1939” that we first glimpse the setting for what would become “The Age of Anxiety”:

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play . . .

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

At the outset of “The Age of Anxiety”