Lullaby (Masterplots II: Poetry, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: W. H. Auden
- First Published: 1937
- Type of Work: Lyric
- Genres: Poetry, Lyric poetry
- Subjects: Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Love or romance, Sex or sexuality, Poetry or poets, Beauty, Death or dying, Aging, Sleep, Night
The Poem
W. H. Auden’s “Lullaby,” his most famous love lyric, perhaps is better known by its famous first line, “Lay your sleeping head, my love.” In musical and rhetorical lines of mostly trochaic tetrameter verse, the narrator watches his sleeping lover through the night and, in four ten-line stanzas, reflects upon the value and necessity of both passionate love and beauty and their brevity.
The speaker gazes upon his lover beside him and sings this philosophical “lullaby” about love, beauty, and time’s ruthless pull. The speaker realizes that time...
[The entire page is 1386 words long]
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