Lullaby+-+W.H.+Auden


 * Lullaby**

Lay your sleeping head, my love,

Human on my faithless arm;

Time and fevers burn away

Individual beauty from

Thoughtful children, and the grave

Proves the child ephemeral:

But in my arms till break of day

Let the living creature lie,

Mortal, guilty, but to me

The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:

To lovers as they lie upon

Her tolerant enchanted slope

In their ordinary swoon,

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Universal love and hope;

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">While an abstract insight wakes

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Among the glaciers and the rocks

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Certainty, fidelity

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">On the stroke of midnight pass

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Like vibrations of a bell

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">And fashionable madmen raise

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Their pedantic boring cry;

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Every farthing of the cost,

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">All the dreaded cards foretell,

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Shall be paid, but from this night

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Not a whisper, not a thought,

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Not a kiss nor look be lost.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Beauty, midnight, vision dies:

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Let the winds of dawn that blow

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Softly round your dreaming head

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Such a day of sweetness show

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Eye and knocking heart may bless,

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Find the mortal world enough;

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Noons of dryness see you fed

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">By the inovluntary powers,

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Nights of the insult let you pass

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Watched by every human love.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">//WH Auden - 1937//