Auden, you mad, depressing, encouraging poet!

I am really enjoying the Auden we've been reading for this class.  I loved rereading those I've read before - "Musee des Beaux Arts", "Funeral Blues", and "The Unknown Citizen", for example - and I relished the new experience of reading "In Praise of Limestone" (that was sure a challenge!) and "The Shield of Achilles".  One of our assignments for this class is to put together a web page focusing on some aspect of modern British poetry or on a poet.  I was having a hard time with this.  Today, I think I get it.  I should have gotten it before.  I mean, life is full of just such contradictions as Auden and the other poets I'm currently studying present.  Aren't we lucky to live in a time when we have leisure time to spend on the internet and dancing and poetry and whatever else we wish?  But on the other side of the world or down the street are people fighting just to live, soldiers fighting in wars of dubious origins, poisoned streams, vacuous celebrities - I could go on, but I think you get my point.  The bounty of the modern world isn't a bounty for all.  And even those of us lucky enough to benefit . . .  I feel uncomfortable sometimes, knowing how lucky I am, and feeling that there is so little I can do to pass that "luck" on to others.  Yes, I know there is more to these poets and their poems than what I find affecting me, but that's what I'm taking from them today.