W. H. Auden to spend his summers with Auden in Austria. In 1972, Auden moved his winter home from New York to Oxford, where his old college, Christ Church, offered him a cottage, while he continued to spend summers in Austria. He died in Vienna in 1973, a few hours after giving a reading of his poems at the Austrian Society for Literature; his death occurred at the Altenburgerhof Hotel where he was staying overnight before his intended return to Oxford the next day. He was buried in Kirchstetten. Auden published about four hundred poems, including seven long poems (two of them book-length).
Epilogue For W. H. Auden devote five pages of their book "Auden, MacNeice, Spender: The Thirties Poetry" (1992) to a discussion of "Epilogue: For W. H. Auden". O'Neill and Reeves write that this poem "does all the things expected of a thirties poem so comprehensively as to teeter on the verge of self-caricature - which is itself characteristic of the poetry of the period. But by the end it has transcended itself with great authority. At its core is private suffering, buried and yet painfully exposed. It uses all the tonal stops and tricks of diction at MacNeice's command." O'Neill and Reeves conclude that this