In praise of a master …

… Michael Dirda reviews two new volumes of W.H. Auden's collected works - The Washington Post. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

In his youth, Auden planned to become a mining engineer, and he’s always terrific at depicting industrial landscapes — he gravitates to tram lines and slag heaps — but he can also survey rough terrain through the eyes of a secret agent: “Control of the passes was, he saw, the key” or “Watching with binoculars the movement of the grass for an ambush,/ The pistol cocked, the code-word committed to memory …”