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Read more poems by W.H. Auden: W.H. Auden Poems at Poetry X.

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, guility, 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 abstract insight wakes 
Among the glaciers and the rocks 
The hermit's sensual 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 sweetness show 
Eye and knocking heart may bless, 
Find your mortal world enough; 
Noons of dryness see you fed 
By the involuntary powers, 
Nights of insult let you pass 
Watched by every human love. 

Added: 19 Aug 2001 | Last Read: 21 Mar 2010 1:01 PM | Viewed: 18488 times

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