Lullaby

[raybear]

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 ecstacy,

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.

Comments

[katemosey.livejournal.com]

That's my favorite poem by Auden ... although I have somewhat of a shady past with that poem.

[raybear.livejournal.com]

Why was I tempted to make some cheesy bad pickup line about it being fate that it's your favorite Auden poem and I just posted it?

Instead I will say: shady past? Do tell!!

[katemosey.livejournal.com]

It was five years ago and it was the closest I ever came to infidelity.
The Boy and I had been together for five years at that point and I met this other person who blew my mind.
We flirted incessantly.
I developed a huge crush on this person and for Valentine's Day one year, I sent him that poem, snail mail, in a beautiful letter.
He took me to the opera the next week. Whilst outside after the show, I somehow made a decision not to go through with anything that would hurt the Boy. So this other person took me home and after that night, the crush ended. I willed it to.
I'm such a good citizen.
But we're all tempted from time to time.
;)

[raybear.livejournal.com]

You are a good citizen. Though I would believe that even if you "fell into temptation".

Thanks for sharing the story!

[captainblunder.livejournal.com]

that was nice. thanks.