Lullabies

The one of Yeats, and the other of Auden.  Have a great weekend!
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Lullaby

By W.B.Yeats

Beloved, may your sleep be sound

That have found it where you fed.

What were all the world's alarms

To mighty Paris when he found

Sleep upon a golden bed

That first dawn in Helen's arms?

Sleep, beloved, such a sleep

As did that wild Tristram know

When, the potion's work being done,

Roe could run or doe could leap

Under oak and beechen bough,

Roe could leap or doe could run;

Such a sleep and sound as fell

Upon Eurotas' grassy bank

When the holy bird, that there

Accomplished his predestined will,

From the limbs of Leda sank

But not from her protecting care.

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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 the mortal world enough;

Noons of dryness find you fed

By the involuntary powers,

Nights of insult let you pass

Watched by every human love.