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.

ENJOY MORE
 The Ceylon Press publishes a range of podcasts including The History Of Sri Lanka; the off-grid Jungle Diaries podcast; Island Stories, the podcast that explores what makes Sri Lanka, Sri Lankan; the Wild Isle Podcast: Stories from Sri Lanka’s Nature; a range of complete Audio Books about Sri Lanka; as well as Poetry from The Jungle.  All these, along with eBooks, dictionaries, guides and companions can be found at www.theceylonpress.com, based at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel in the jungle northwest of Kandy: www.flametreeestate.com.  
 

The copyright of this podcast recording is David Swarbrick @The Ceylon Press 2025. 

POETRY FROM THE JUNGLE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGES THE COPYRIGHT CREDIT: 
 Copyright © 1940 W. H. Auden, renewed by the Estate of W. H. Auden.