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Lullaby by W.H. Auden

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.