Lay your sleeping head, my love, <br />Human on my faithless arm; <br />Time and fevers burn away <br />Individual beauty from <br />Thoughtful children, and the grave <br />Proves the child ephemeral: <br />But in my arms till break of day <br />Let the living creature lie, <br />Mortal, guility, but to me <br />The entirely beautiful. <br /> <br />Soul and body have no bounds: <br />To lovers as they lie upon <br />Her tolerant enchanted slope <br />In their ordinary swoon, <br />Grave the vision Venus sends <br />Of supernatural sympathy, <br />Universal love and hope; <br />While abstract insight wakes <br />Among the glaciers and the rocks <br />The hermit's sensual ecstasy. <br /> <br />Certainty, fidelity <br />On the stroke of midnight pass <br />Like vibrations of a bell, <br />And fashionable madmen raise <br />Their pedantic boring cry: <br />Every farthing of the cost, <br />All the dreaded cards foretell, <br />Shall be paid, but from this night <br />Not a whisper, not a thought, <br />Not a kiss nor look be lost. <br /> <br />Beauty, midnight, vision dies: <br />Let the winds of dawn that blow <br />Softly round your dreaming head <br />Such a day of sweetness show <br />Eye and knocking heart may bless, <br />Find your mortal world enough; <br />Noons of dryness see you fed <br />By the involuntary powers, <br />Nights of insult let you pass <br />Watched by every human love.<br /><br />W.H. Auden<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/lullaby-3/
