You know the terror that for poets lurks

Beyond the ferry when to Minos brought.

Poets must utter their Collected Works,

Including Juvenilia.. . .

--from "Letter to Lord Byron" (1936)

Regardless of how poets feel about their youthful attempts at verse, their early poems not only enrich our understanding of their artistic growth, but also reveal much about the nature of literary genius. No other twentieth-century poet has left behind such a wealth of early poetry as did W. H. Auden. By bringing together for the first time all the poems written...