Choose Hope

In honor and remembrance of the many family members, friends, and neighbors lost on September 11, and the many heroes who stepped up in ways both large and small to support our city and our nation, we offer you to consider “September 1, 1939”, a poem by W. H. Auden.

W. H. Auden (1907-1973) was a British-American Pulitzer-Prize winning poet. He moved to New York in 1939 and lived in Brooklyn Heights. On the eve of September 1 that year, he wrote this poem marking the start of World War II, when Germany invaded Poland. It was first published in the magazine The New Republic on October 18, and a year later was published in Auden’s book of poems Another Time. This poem became extremely popular due to its message of carrying hope in the midst of national tragedy: particularly the line, “We must love one another or die”. President Lyndon Johnson quoted this in a speech, which was later used in his famous television commercial “Daisy” during the 1964 presidential election. Most likely due to its popularity, Auden hated it. He only allowed it to be published once more, in 1964, in an anthology titled Poetry of the Thirties by Penguin Books. However, he allowed it on one condition: a note from the author to be published along with it. It read, "Mr. W. H. Auden considers these five poems to be trash which he is ashamed to have written." We’ll let you decide. Today, as we stand in a nation divided, plagued with the ever-growing weapons of fear and hate, we ask you to once again consider hope and choose love.

While we would like to share the poem in its entirety here directly on our website, we unfortunately are not allowed to do so due to copyright restrictions. Please view the poem here at Poets.org where it is published legally on the internet.