Algebra of Night: No. 6, 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 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.