Monday Inspiration

I may never have mentioned it, but as someone with a degree in English (Secondary Ed/English concentration, actually), I'm not only a lover of literture...I've gotten swept away by a fair number of poems, as well, some of which are as inspiring as the most beautiful pieces of music. I thought, for this Monday, I'd share one of my very favorites. Like much of my favorite poetry, it's moving, lyrical, wistful, and its imagery, speaking of love captured in one of its fleeting moments of perfection in a decidedly imperfect world, has always rung true for me. The picture, which I put up recently on Wickedly Romantic, is also by an artist I've always liked, an early twentieth century illustrator named Maxfield Parrish. This piece is called Sleeping Beauty...I thought it fit:-) Hope the picture and the poem help start your week off with something lovely. And if you're a poetry lover, are there any special poems you carry with you?

-Kendra

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 our mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness find you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.