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LAY DOWN YOUR SLEEPING HEAD song lyrics
adapted by Joel Sattler

based on the poem:
"Lay Your Sleeping Head, My Love"
by W. H. Auden

Lay down your sleeping head, love,
safe on my faithless arm, love
fever and time may burn away
beauty from children at play

in my arms at break of day, love
think not dreams of the grave, love
and though we're mortal and are guilty
you are still the light to me

Soul and body have no bounds
as you are now entirely

beautiful as lovers as they lie upon the beach
In ordinary rapture of the love they seek

love universe and of hope, love
While abstract insight awakes, love
Among the glaciers and stones
The hermit ecstatic alone

On the stroke of midnight pass
vibrations of the bells at last
And fashionable madmen raise
Their boring cry within the haze and

with every farthing of cost, love
it shall be paid not from night, love
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss or look be lost ....

Beauty, mid-night, vision fades:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
So softly round your dreaming head
and such a day
of sweetness show
not dead

Eye, knocking heart may us bless
Noons of the dry see you fed
By all the powers above
Watched now by all human
love.

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