"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.