Lay Your Sleeping Head (Poem By Auden)

Please be aware: this poem is about love, and tenderness, but it is also about loss, parting and sadness. The original title is Lullaby, reflecting the recurring themes of care and support; the range of mood and imagery perhaps belie that title.

Transcript

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-vener sense of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope,

While an abstract insight wakes among the glaciers and the rocks,

The hermit's sensual ecstasy.

Certainty,

Fidelity,

On the stroke of midnight past,

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 night of sweetness show I,

A 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.

Reviews

A truly lovely rendition ❤️

Your voice and poetry flow as one to make beautiful listening. Namaste.