Senseless Act of Quotation

[tmcg]

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 sleeping creature lie
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

(....)

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.

Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

--From "Lullaby," W. H. Auden






Those are my favorite stanzas from my favorite poem in the world. My mother says she used to whisper the last stanza to me at bedtime when I was small. I don't remember hearing it, but it probably got in subliminally. The second-to-last stanza was one of my college-yearbook quotes. (Followed by "'Oh, well,' sang McWatt. 'What the hell.'" --Catch-22.) I've said the last lines to myself often when I'm feeling derided and attacked (although these days I blare Jimmy Eat World's "In the Middle" from the nearest audio equipment instead, and sing along too loudly with the last verse). I just felt an irresistible urge to share it. Blame akaspeedo and thenetwork for the intense poetry they've been posting. After I typed it in, I realized there's another reason, too, but it's probably important only to me.

Recited from fallible memory; I'll pull the Collected Works out at some point and fix the punctuation and whatever else.