“Does a man feel prouder of what he achieves himself or of the effect he has on the achievements of posterity? Which epitaph upon a poet’s grave would please him more: ‘I wrote some of the most beautiful poetry of my time’ or ‘I rescued English lyric from the dead hand of Campion and Tom Moore’? I suspect that more poets would prefer the second than their readers would ever guess, particularly when, like Yeats, they are comfortably aware that the first is also true.”
W.H. Auden, “Yeats as an Example” (Kenyon Review, Spring 1948)