---

W H Auden - Lullaby
Work rating: Medium

	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 dreadful 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 the mortal world enough;
	Noons of dryness see you fed
	By the involuntary powers,
	Nights of insult let you pass
	Watched by every human love.
Source
The script ran 0.001 seconds.