Speaking of not being all of a piece …

… What Auden believed by David Yezzi | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

The moral compass of Christianity provided Auden with something more than a mere interesting poetic possibility; his Christian beliefs were in fact “true” for Auden, though he retained a deep-seated modesty about them. As Auden observed in a sermon delivered at Westminster Abbey, where he is now honored in Poets’ Corner, “Those of us who have the nerve to call ourselves Christians will do well to be extremely reticent on this subject. Indeed, it is almost the definition of a Christian that he is somebody who knows he isn’t one, either in faith or morals.”