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 sensual ecstasy.
Certainly, 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 dreadful cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but not from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be loath,
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 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.
–W. H. Auden
Isn’t this a beautiful and beautiful piece of verse. I’m glad you liked it. 🙂
Thanks to you, Peter. Thank you for letting me know it. 🙂 it’s really beautiful.
P.S. I will have internet this Friday, so I will be able to post every day. 🙂
I’m glad you like it. It cheers me that our sensibilities are so in tune. I don’t even know what country or continent you are on, but that’s enough, and more important than geography
I am from a country which most British hate. The name of it is Bulgaria.
I’m not sure that is correct. Don’t confuse the newspapers with the people. As for me, I love different cultures, and yours, as evidenced by you, seems full of wonder
🙂