Lullaby
                                                                                                                                                                             W. H. Auden

Lay your sleeping head,           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
                        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.