Lullaby W. H. Auden

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Lay your sleeping head, my love,Human on my faithless arm;Time and fevers burn awayIndividual beauty fromThoughtful children, and the graveProves the child ephemeral:But in my arms till break of dayLet the living creature lie,Mortal, guilty, but to meThe entirely beautiful.
Soul and body have no bounds:To lovers as they lie uponHer tolerant enchanted slopeIn their ordinary swoon,Grave the vision Venus sendsOf supernatural sympathy,Universal love and hope;While an abstract insight wakesAmong the glaciers and the rocksThe hermit's carnal ecstasy.
Certainty, fidelityOn the stroke of midnight passLike vibrations of a bellAnd fashionable madmen raiseTheir pedantic boring cry:Every farthing of the cost,All the dreaded cards foretell,Shall be paid, but from this nightNot a whisper, not a thought,Not a kiss nor look be lost.
Beauty, midnight, vision dies:Let the winds of dawn that blowSoftly round your dreaming headSuch a day of welcome showEye and knocking heart may bless,Find our mortal world enough;Noons of dryness find you fedBy the involuntary powers,Nights of insult let you passWatched by every human love.