Singing to Sleep

Sleep, sleep, my soul, let sorrow close thine eyes.
Nurse fantasy records her lullabies.
Fold up thine arms and into sighs expire.
Deep sighs, the drowsy pages of desire.
My restless heart whom troublous thoughts molest Shall cradle thee;
thy cabin is my breast:
Where neither sun of joy nor star of light
Can break the mist of an affected night.
Here sadness rules;
and here thy drooping head
Instead of down shall have a frozen bed;
Love rocks thy panting cradle;
and to bring thy thoughts asleep, melancholy shall sing.
And when thou wakest to appease thy cries,
Sad grief with tears distilling from mine eyes 
shall feed thy passion til that bitter food
Do surfeit it and in my death conclude.

If I could, I would sing you to sleep.
I would give you my hand to keep
In yours till you fell asleep,
And take it away then, slowly.
I would sit by you and be.

In the world the dark would be deep.
I would watch. And at last I would sleep.

But if rain should star the stream
Of your sleep, I would whisper: “See
You are asleep”; and slowly,
Your breath would change in your dream
Till, ages and ages deep
In the dark, you would say to me:
“I love you.”
I love you,
But I am here always. Sleep now. Sleep.

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 see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.