Lullaby

The library used to be one of my favourite places to go. But it’s been years since i’ve been inside. To look for books. I don’t read that much anymore. And really, i do think i read most books i wanted to read and which are available in the library.

I loved poems from W.H. Auden. There was this thick book, it might have been Collected Poems. I got it like three four times, at least.

I do admit, this was how far my poetry went. Over the past year i did read the poetry page in the NRC on Thursday. But i never really dived into it.

Today, when i was going through my old present pages on lfs.nl, i came across this poem i published there on 31 December 1999, Lullaby.

Lullaby

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.

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 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 (1907-1973)

Summary and analysis.

I had to think about the category into which i would place this post. First i picked Beauty. Still good. But i decided against it and picked World. And then i thought stupid me! it should go in Books and TV!