Friday, February 15, 2013

"The Poet's Corner..."


"Lullaby"
W.H. Auden


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, 
Universal love and hope; 
While an abstract insight wakes
Among the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of midnight pass
Like vibrations of a bell
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry: 
Every farthing of the cost, 
All the dreaded cards foretell, 
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought, 
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies: 
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of welcome show
Eye and knocking heart may bless, 
Find our mortal world enough; 
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers, 
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.


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