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 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 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.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
WH,Auden Lullaby
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I don't want to pretend that I understood this poem. So in my head I imagined it to be about the moon. ("Watched by every human love".) I saw the author standing outside on the cloudless night stretching his arms toward the full moon, as if holding it in his arms. ("Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm"; and "Let the winds of dawn that blow softly round your dreaming head"). While looking at the moon, the author is thinking about love while questioning the notion of human mortality. ("Time and fevers burn away individual beauty from thoughtful children".) The moon reminds him of love and beauty ("Grave the vision Venus sends Of supernatural sympathy, Universal love and hope") and the eternal world surrounding his body and soul. ("Soul and body have no bounds:
ReplyDeleteTo lovers as they lie upon Her tolerant enchanted slope").
I promise I did not have a drink before reading this poem. Cheers.
Well I imagined a baby held tenderly in a Mother's arms until I got to later verses and checked it on You tube where there is both a read version and one with text AND visuals .I love the sounds and patterns 0F the words and all I had had was a SM00THIE !
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