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World Poetry Translation Project


Submit Human Translation | Discuss Poem | Post Poetry | Listen McGill Live

Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love

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 ephermeral:
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 sensual 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 dreadful cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but not 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 sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless.
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.


American Review | www.PaperLyon.com | McGill Live Radio | Publish
 

  Translations for this Poem
 English  Spanish  French  German
 Italian  Portuguese  Korean  Russian
 Chinese  Japanese    
 

  Poems by W.H. Auden
  1. As I Walked Out One Evening
  2. August 1968
  3. A Walk After Dark
  4. Epitaph On A Tyrant
  5. Funeral Blues
  6. If I Could Tell You
  7. In Memory Of WB Yeats
  8. In Praise Of Limestone
  9. Law Like Love
  10. Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love
  11. Let History Be My Judge
  12. Like A Vocation
  13. Lullaby
  14. Museacutee des Beaux Arts
  15. Old Peoples Home
  16. Petition
  17. September 1 1939
  18. The Fall Of Rome
  19. The More Loving One
  20. The Novelist
  21. The Shield Of Achilles
  22. The Two
  23. The Unknown Citizen
  24. Three Short Poems
  25. Under Which Lyre
  26. Voltaire At Ferney
  27. Whos Who
 
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPRSTVWY[ALL] 
  W.H. Auden 
  W.S. Merwin 
  Wallace Stevens 
  Walt Whitman 
  Walter Savage Landor 
  Wang Wei 
  Weldon Kees 
  Wendell Berry 
  Wilfred Owen 
  William Barnes 
  William Blake 
  William Butler Yeats 
  William Carlos Williams 
  William Collins 
  William Cowper 
  William Drummond 
  William Ernest Henley 
  William Lisle Bowles 
  William Shakespeare 
  William Stafford 
  William Wordsworth 
  Wislawa Szymborska 
   

Volunteers needed to translate poetry into different languages. Please help us correct the translation of these poems. We currently have 79,663 translations and are trying to create the largest and most accurate database of world poetry translations. We have started with machine translations which are very inaccurate. Please translate your favorite poem on this site. You will be given credit for your translation and a link to your site if desired. COPYRIGHT NOTICE: These poems have been gathered and submitted by many of people, and from many sources. Most have no copyright. However, some may may have copyrights. We have tried to collect poems that appear on many external sites where the author seems to want to disseminate. If you are an author and do not want your poetry translated into other languages then send a removal request and it will be promptly removed.
 



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