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“Lullaby” Introduction
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"Lullaby" is one of the best-known poems from W. H. Auden's classic collection Another Time (1940). In mixed tones of romance and realism, its speaker addresses a lover who is asleep in their arms after a night of passion. The poem explores both the bliss and limits of love, which it frames as a flawed, fragile, "Human" phenomenon—but also as something that can bring a vision of transcendent "sympathy" and "hope." Set against the backdrop of a society dominated by "fashionable madmen," the poem acknowledges the inevitability of change and destruction, including the inevitable end of the romance itself. Still, the speaker hopes to salvage the memory of this beautiful night and hopes their love will help the lover accept the painful, "mortal world" as well.
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“Lullaby” Summary
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My darling, rest your head on my arm as you sleep, though you are only human, and I am not faithful. Young, intelligent people lose their distinctive beauty through time and illness, and death shows that childhood is fleeting. Yet from now until dawn, may you stay in my arms: alive, mortal, flawed, but, in my opinion, absolutely lovely.
Both body and spirit are limitless. To lovers who rest in Love's territory as on a charmed and hospitable hillside, feeling their normal physical rapture, the love-goddess brings a solemn vision of transcendent compassion, all-encompassing connection, and hope. Meanwhile, an intellectual insight gives even a recluse, living in an icy and stony wilderness, a kind of sexual thrill.
Faithfulness and belief pass away, as if with the tolling of the midnight bell. Deranged people whose ideas are in vogue make pompous, long-winded speeches. The full cost of all this will have to be paid; it's "in the cards" and inevitable, just as we fear. But in the meantime, let's not forget a single whisper, thought, kiss, or glance from our night together.
Loveliness, visionary moments, and midnight itself all pass away. Now may the morning breeze, which caresses your sleeping head, usher in a day so beautiful that your eyes and beating heart will bless it, satisfied by this flawed world of change and death. May intuitive forces help you on days when you're feeling creatively dried up. May you feel, during harsh and difficult nights, that the love of all humanity is watching over you.
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“Lullaby” Themes
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The Joys and Limits of Love
W. H. Auden's "Lullaby" is an emotionally complex poem addressed to a lover who lies sleeping in the speaker's arms. Though the speaker feels passionate about their lover, they also understand that this person is only "Human" and that they themselves are not wholly committed to this relationship. At the same time, the speaker marvels at the way romance, however flawed, can seem to unite one not only with one's partner but with all of humankind. Love is imperfect and impermanent, the poem suggests, but it can nevertheless make us feel more connected to and at home in the troubled, uncertain world we all share.
Though the speaker is in love, they are careful to be realistic as well as romantic. For example, the poem's tender opening line—"Lay your sleeping head, my love"—is followed by one that calls attention to both the speaker's and lover's flaws. Both of these people are "Mortal, guilty," and imperfect, not gods on pedestals. Indeed, rather than swearing traditional vows of fidelity, the speaker acknowledges their own "faithless" reluctance to commit to this romance.
Throughout the poem, in fact, the speaker tempers their romantic phrases with doses of realism:
- The lovers seem to lie on the "tolerant enchanted slope" of "Venus" herself (the ancient Roman goddess of love). Their romance feels magical, and they rest in a "swoon" of passion.
- Yet this swoon, the speaker admits, is actually "ordinary"; many people experience such bliss. What's more, the vision of "Universal love" that Venus seems to bring is not intoxicating but "Grave." There's a sense, in other words, that love comes with serious responsibility; in connecting us with others, it forces us to be less selfish and more "sympath[etic]."
- Similarly, the speaker warns that "Certainty" and "fidelity" will pass "On the stroke of midnight": the fairy tale of romance always ends. "Beauty, midnight, vision dies": nothing beautiful lasts forever, and the visionary state that love seems to inspire always reverts to reality.
Despite this skepticism, the speaker notes that love draws us outside ourselves and connects us with others—not just our loved ones, but everyone. According to the speaker, love offers the feeling that "Soul and body have no bounds" and that we are united with the world at large. The vision that Venus brings includes a sense of "supernatural sympathy": transcendent or divine connection with all of humankind.
Even a total "hermit"—the most reclusive and meditative person—can experience a sudden "carnal ecstasy," or sexual thrill. No matter how much we try to wall ourselves off from others, our natural passions ensure that we're never wholly cut off from what makes us human. (Indeed, the poem hints that there's something outright spiritual about sex and something sexual about the spiritual contemplation of the "hermit.")
Ultimately, the speaker reconciles these competing realistic and romantic impulses into a series of tender wishes for their lover. Though the speaker acknowledges that their love must die, they hope that it will fulfill their lover (and, implicitly, themselves) while it lasts. They wish, or pray, that their shared night of passion will usher in at least a brief happiness: a "day of welcome" that arrives like a "bless[ing]." Finally, they hope that it will bring a sense of being "watched by every human love" even during hard times ("Nights of insult"). In other words, they hope that the feeling of universal "love" and "sympathy," whatever its limits, will carry over into less ecstatic moments.
Love is no miraculous salvation, the poem suggests, but it nourishes us, reconciles us to life's hard realities, and brings us a little closer to the rest of humanity.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-40
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Time, Change, and Mortality
"Lullaby" is not only a love poem but a meditation on time, change, and death. It joins a long tradition of "carpe diem" or "memento mori" poems: that is, it reminds the reader that death is inevitable and that life (and the love it includes) must be enjoyed while it lasts. The poem also strives to embrace the reality of time and change, almost in the same spirit that the speaker embraces their lover. The speaker knows neither life nor love can last forever, yet with a kind of protective tenderness, hopes that their lover will "Find the mortal world enough" to satisfy their "heart" anyway. In the process, the speaker seems to encourage the reader, too, to welcome the imperfections of an impermanent world.
The poem repeatedly stresses that all things pass. For example, the speaker reflects that time takes away the "Individual beauty" of "Thoughtful children," and that "the grave / Proves the child ephemeral." In other words, we all lose our youthful looks, age, and die. The speaker stresses that both they and their lover are "Mortal"; in fact, the whole "world" is "mortal." Even in the midst of a beautiful night, which seems to bring visions of universal love, the speaker concedes that "Beauty, midnight, vision dies." By extension, all things do.
Confronted with this state of constant flux, the speaker urges the lover—and, implicitly, themselves—to find ways of accepting it. The speaker hopes, or prays, that not a single memory will "be lost" from their "night" with their lover. Though they know this is ultimately impossible, they work to salvage these meaningful experiences as best they can, through memory and art. The speaker also wishes that their night of pleasure will be followed by a beautiful "day of welcome" that lifts the lover's "heart." In this atmosphere, the speaker hopes their lover will "Find the mortal world enough": that is, reconcile themselves to the impermanence of life and love.
And this is just what they are trying to do themselves—and encouraging the reader to do. As painful as time and change are, the speaker suggests, it's possible to "welcome" them, just as one would a gentle "dawn." It's possible to be stoic and romantic at once; in fact, an honest acknowldgement that all things are temporary can help us savor the good things that much more.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 3-10
- Lines 21-36
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Social Unrest, Anxiety, and Peace
Despite its peaceful rhythms, "Lullaby" contains an undercurrent of anxiety about the turbulent surrounding world. The poem dates from the period just before World War II, and it hints that as the two lovers embrace, social/political turmoil threatens their peace. The "Lullaby" is thus only an attempted reassurance in the face of deep uncertainty. It warns that the lovers' feelings of "dread[]" are justified, but it also suggests that appreciating love and peace while they last can help people salvage something worthwhile from a "mad[]," destructive world.
The lovers' rest in "Lullaby" is menaced by hints of a larger unrest, which they will not be able to escape forever. The speaker warns that some terrible "cost" must be "paid" for their current happiness, just as the "dreaded cards foretell"—in other words, just as current, ominous signs seem to promise. Like romantic "fidelity," any sense of "Certainty" will soon "pass," as if at the tolling of a sinister "bell." One bad omen is the current prominence of "fashionable madmen" who "raise / Their pedantic boring cry." In other words, some sort of cultural or political madness is in vogue, thanks in part to loud, long-winded, unbalanced leaders. Though not tied to a specific reference, these lines may evoke the dictators and zealots (fascists, Stalinists, etc.) who were overtaking much of Europe during the period Auden was writing in.
These warnings make the "Lullaby" somewhat ironic, since they're anything but soothing. Yet the speaker tries to salvage some consolation—the appreciation of love—from a world where true reassurance is impossible. Though anxious, the speaker wishes or prays that nothing may "be lost" from their night with their lover—"Not a whisper, not a thought." The poem itself memorializes their experience and implies that beautiful art and memories, at least, can live on when everything else falls apart. The speaker also suggests that some larger "human love" endures and can console us even during "Nights of insult"—times of suffering, devastation, etc. Nature (which transcends human society) can offer some comfort, too, as illustrated by the "winds of dawn that blow / Softly" around the lovers. Broadly, the poem suggests that love, beauty, and peace are possible—however temporarily—even in a world full of violence and destruction.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-2
- Lines 7-8
- Lines 21-30
- Lines 31-40
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Lullaby”
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Lines 1-6
Lay your sleeping ...
... the child ephemeral:W. H. Auden's "Lullaby" is a lullaby for grown-ups—full of nuance and emotional sophistication—but it begins in a fairly traditional manner. Its opening line could come straight from a children's lullaby: "Lay your sleeping head, my love."
Conventionally, lullabies are meant to soothe children and urge them to sleep, and line 1 seems to fit that mold. Its trochaic tetrameter (four-beat, DUM-da DUM-da rhythm), which continues throughout the poem, echoes the meter of such popular lullabies as "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."
But as the stanza continues, it soon becomes clear that this is no children's song. Several features mark this "Lullaby" as unusual:
- First, the speaker is not a parent singing to a child but one lover singing to another. (Though the lullaby conceit may imply that there's a significant age gap between them.)
- Second, it's addressed to a listener who's already "sleeping" and doesn't need to be further lulled. This quirk raises the possibility that the speaker is singing the lullaby, in part, for themselves, as they lie awake in the middle of the night.
- Finally, whereas the words of traditional lullabies tend to calm and reassure, this poem sprinkles a lot of anxiety into the mix.
Right after urging their lover to sleep soundly, the speaker acknowledges that the lover is only "Human" and they themselves are "faithless." (The phrase "faithless arm" is an example of synecdoche: the speaker's arm stands in, here, for their whole person.) Though the adjective "Human" is tenderly humanizing, it also makes clear that the speaker doesn't put their lover on a pedestal. Nor do they have any illusions about themselves: "faithless" implies that they will not stay sexually or emotionally faithful to their lover. This is not a romance that will last a lifetime, though it may be deeply fulfilling in the moment. It may even be, to outward appearances, a casual fling.
Even less reassuring is the metaphor that follows:
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, [...]This language all but flies in the face of traditional lullabies, which tend to reassure kids that they are safe and protected. This speaker observes, instead, that children grow old and lose their "Individual beauty," as if "Time and fevers" were a continuous fire "burn[ing] away" their youth. "Fevers" here might refer to literal illnesses, or, figuratively, to feverish anxiety, ambition, and so on. The children's "Thoughtful[ness]" may be an element of their beauty, but it may also come at a cost to their beauty (anxious thoughts can cause stress, which causes the body to age faster). The speaker adds that "the grave / Proves the child ephemeral": in other words, death comes for everyone, and provides the ultimate proof that youth cannot last.
These sobering reflections place the poem in the carpe diem or memento mori tradition: that is, the tradition of literature that reminds readers they will someday die, and urges them to enjoy youth, love, and life while they can. In telling their lover to sleep in their arms, this speaker is also effectively saying: Let's embrace while our love and youth last, because nothing lasts forever.
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Lines 7-10
But in my ...
... The entirely beautiful.
Unlock all 254 words of this analysis of Lines 7-10 of “Lullaby,” and get the Line-by-Line Analysis for every poem we cover.
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Lines 11-15
Soul and body ...
... vision Venus sends -
Lines 16-20
Of supernatural sympathy, ...
... hermit's carnal ecstasy. -
Lines 21-25
Certainty, fidelity ...
... pedantic boring cry: -
Lines 26-30
Every farthing of ...
... look be lost. -
Lines 31-36
Beauty, midnight, vision ...
... mortal world enough; -
Lines 37-40
Noons of dryness ...
... every human love.
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“Lullaby” Symbols
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The Glaciers and the Rocks
The "hermit" described in lines 18-20 lives "Among the glaciers and the rocks." Glaciers and rocks are found in hard, forbidding, often isolated terrain; glaciers are also cold and (for most of the world) remote. These natural phenomena therefore symbolize the hermit's emotional coldness, remoteness, and isolation. This reclusive figure not only lives apart from but emotionally walls themselves off from the rest of humanity. The hermit themselves seems to represent an austere, intellectual, and self-involved (rather than generous, passionate, and compassionate) approach to life.
Still, the hermit isn't cut off completely from their own humanity: they are still capable of feeling "carnal ecstasy," or sexual pleasure, even if it's stimulated by "abstract" thought rather than sensory experience.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 18-20: “While an abstract insight wakes / Among the glaciers and the rocks / The hermit's carnal ecstasy.”
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“Lullaby” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Repetition
Repetition draws attention to a number of important words in "Lullaby": "love"/"lovers," "human," "beauty"/"beautiful," "mortal," and "vision." These repeated words capture the poem's balance between romance (its celebration of love, beauty, and the visionary feelings they inspire) and realism (its recognition that all people, including our loved ones, are flawed and mortal). There are also several references to "night"/"midnight" and "day," which underscore the poem's setting: the hours between nightfall and dawn, when lullabies are typically sung.
In fact, the words "beauty," "vision," and "midnight," which appear respectively in the first, second, and third stanzas, reappear in the first line of the last stanza: "Beauty, midnight, vision dies." This repetition has the effect of braiding together themes from the earlier stanzas into a unified, conclusive whole. All these things pass, the speaker notes, but they can still nourish us at the dawn of a new "day."
Repetition also adds emphasis to certain phrases. Look at the anaphora in lines 29-30, for example:
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.Here, the repetition conveys the speaker's determination—or desperation—not to lose a single memory from this passionate evening.
The poem makes effective use of parallelism as well. Notice how the parallel structure in lines 37 and 39 helps the speaker draw both a comparison and a contrast:
Noons of dryness find you fed [...]
Nights of insult let you pass [...]That is, the similar phrasing highlights both the contrast between "Noons" and "Nights" and the emotional parallels between creative "dryness" and painful "insult." Basically, the speaker is hoping that their shared passion—and the joys and memories it brings—will help comfort the lover through bad days and bad nights alike.
Where repetition appears in the poem:- Line 1: “your,” “head,” “love”
- Line 2: “Human”
- Line 4: “beauty”
- Line 7: “day”
- Line 8: “Let the”
- Line 9: “Mortal”
- Line 10: “beautiful”
- Line 12: “lovers”
- Line 15: “vision”
- Line 17: “love”
- Line 22: “midnight”
- Line 28: “night”
- Line 29: “Not a,” “not a”
- Line 30: “Not a”
- Line 31: “Beauty,” “midnight,” “vision”
- Line 32: “Let the”
- Line 33: “head”
- Line 34: “day”
- Line 36: “mortal”
- Line 37: “of,” “you”
- Line 38: “By”
- Line 39: “Nights,” “of,” “you”
- Line 40: “by,” “human,” “love”
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Metaphor
Unlock all 278 words of this analysis of Metaphor in “Lullaby,” and get the poetic device analyses for every poem we cover.
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Juxtaposition
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End-Stopped Line
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Alliteration
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“Lullaby” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Faithless
- Ephemeral
- Tolerant
- Swoon
- Supernatural sympathy
- Venus
- Abstract
- Carnal ecstasy
- Fidelity
- Fashionable madmen
- Pedantic
- Farthing
- The involuntary powers
Faithless-
(Location in poem: Line 2: “Human on my faithless arm;”)
Faithless can mean:
- Lacking in religious faith.
- Sexually unfaithful.
- Otherwise uncommitted or disloyal, especially in a romantic context.
The second and third meanings are the main ones in this poem, but the first may be implied as well. The "arm" here ("my faithless arm") is a synecdoche for the whole person; the speaker is calling themselves faithless, not just this one part of their body.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Lullaby”
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Form
"Lullaby" is a strongly rhythmic and musical poem, in keeping with its title: "Lullaby." It contains four 10-line stanzas of rhymed trochaic tetrameter. This means that the lines contain four trochees, poetic feet that follow a stressed-unstressed beat pattern—more on that in the Meter section of this guide).
"Lullaby" draws from the rhythms of classic lullabies (i.e., "Twinkle, twinkle little star") as well as some classic English love poems. These rhythms add to the poem's sleepy, romantic, quasi-spiritual mood. At the same time, these echoes of simple, comforting lullabies and poems are also somewhat ironic, given that Auden's "Lullaby" is quite emotionally complex.
To that end, many of the poem's rhymes are slant (e.g., "love"/"grave" and "arm"/"from"), though some are exact (e.g., "away"/"day"). The slant, or imperfect, rhymes add an element of asymmetry and unpredictability, perhaps hinting that the poem's couple are imperfectly matched and lack "Certainty" about the future.
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Meter
"Lullaby" is written in trochaic tetrameter, meaning that its lines contain four trochees: poetic feet with two syllables arranged in a stressed-unstressed (DUM-da) rhythm.
The poem consistently omits the final unstressed syllable from this pattern (in a technique called catalexis), so the typical rhythm of each line goes: DUM-da, DUM-da, DUM-da, DUM. Listen to lines 1-2, for example:
Lay your | sleeping | head, my | love,
Human | on my | faithless | arm;As in most metrical poems, the pattern occasionally varies. Line 7, for example, includes an extra unstressed syllable at the beginning, making it perfect iambic tetrameter (da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM):
But in my arms till break of day
These small variations keep the rhythm from becoming stale and monotonous.
Overall, though, the meter of "Lullaby"—with its strong, rocking rhythm—seems inspired by that of classic lullabies ("Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" again being one famous example: "Twinkle, twinkle, little star, / How I wonder what you are!"). It's also reminiscent of the children's bedtime prayer "Now I lay me down to sleep." Invoking these familiar rhythms makes "Lullaby" sound more like an actual lullaby: a soothing, comforting song.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem's 10-line stanzas follow an ABCBADCEED rhyme scheme:
[...] love, A
[...] arm; B
[...] away C
[...] from B
[...] grave A
[...] ephemeral: D
[...] day C
[...] lie, E
[...] me E
[...] beautiful. DThis scheme is subtle, however, since the majority of the rhymes are slant (imperfect) rather than perfect. For example, "love" in line 1 rhymes with "grave" in line 5, even though their vowels are different. There are only one or two perfect rhyme pairs per stanza (e.g., "away"/"day" in lines 3 and 7).
The prevalence of imperfect rhymes signals that this is a nontraditional "Lullaby." Children's lullabies typically feature strong, exact rhymes that are easy for kids to hear. But Auden's is a lullaby for adults—complete with adult emotional complexity—so the rhymes are correspondingly sophisticated and subtle. Since this is a romantic lullaby, the imperfect rhymes may also hint that the couple is slightly imperfect or mismatched (hence the speaker's acknowledgment that their love won't last forever).
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“Lullaby” Speaker
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The speaker doesn't reveal their name, age, gender, or any other personal information, nor do they reveal the same about their lover. There's no evidence that the poet is creating a separate persona, however, so many critics have read the speaker as Auden himself, even if Auden never makes this explicit.
Such critics suggest that the speaker (like Auden) is a gay man, addressing a male lover with whom he's enjoying a casual romance or fling. (The casualness is signaled by the reference to the speaker's "faithless[ness].") Critics have also suggested that the lover is younger than the speaker, as hinted by the title (a "Lullaby" is normally sung by an adult to a child).
The speaker is both a romantic and a realist. On the one hand, they address their sleeping lover as "my love" and praise them as "The entirely beautiful." On the other hand, they acknowledge that their lover is a flawed "Mortal" (not a flawless god), note that youthful "beauty" is only temporary, and imply that their own sexual/emotional "fidelity" will not last. They assert that sexual bliss or romantic infatuation brings a "vision" of "Universal love and hope," seemingly sent by the goddess "Venus" herself. Yet the speaker also admits that this vision, like beauty, "dies" eventually.
In short, the speaker can't promise their lover too much (and is saying all this to themselves, in any case, since the lover is asleep). Yet they sincerely enjoy their lover's company and wish them the best for the future. Indeed, the speaker hopes that the passion the two of them share—however long it lasts—will help their lover cope with all the difficulties of the "mortal world."
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“Lullaby” Setting
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The poem is set during the "night," as "midnight" passes and a gentle "dawn" approaches. This atmosphere establishes a mood of romance and introspection, as the speaker lies awake with their sleeping lover in their arms.
The physical setting is unclear (the lovers may be indoors or outdoors, for example). Metaphorically, according to the speaker, the lovers lie on the "tolerant enchanted slope" of "Venus," the ancient Roman goddess of beauty and love. In other words, they seem to inhabit a welcoming, magical landscape ruled by love itself. They are in the most blissful stage of romance, even if the "faithless" speaker knows that their happiness can't last.
The speaker also gestures toward the poem's broader historical setting in lines 24-25: "And fashionable madmen raise / Their pedantic boring cry." Some cultural or political "mad[ness]" is in "fashion[]": perhaps the madness of the dictatorial regimes spreading over Europe in the 1930s. (Auden wrote the poem in 1937, just a couple of years before the outbreak of World War II.) This madness creates a distant air of menace as the lovers embrace. Their love is endangered not only by their own "Human" flaws but by the larger turmoil of humankind.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Lullaby”
Literary Context
Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973) wrote "Lullaby" in January 1937 and included it in his collection Another Time (1940). Auden originally published the poem without a title; the first-edition Table of Contents refers to it by its first line, "Lay your sleeping head, my love."
Composed in the period preceding and following the outbreak of World War II, Another Time features some of Auden's best-known political poems, including "September 1, 1939," "Epitaph on a Tyrant," "Refugee Blues," and "The Unknown Citizen." It also contains some popular poems that deal with love and heartbreak, including "Funeral Blues" and "O Tell Me the Truth About Love." The book groups "Lullaby" (a.k.a. "Lay your sleeping head, my love") under the section heading "People and Places," along with such classics as "Musée des Beaux Arts" and "As I Walked Out One Evening."
Auden is widely considered one of the masters of English-language poetry. He was a modernist who helped to define that early 20th-century movement, with its groundbreaking formal and stylistic experimentation. At the same time, he is highly regarded for his facility with traditional verse forms. The wit, technical skill, and restless variety of his work gained him acclaim as both a poet and critic.
Auden's early poetry was deeply political, and often explicitly socialist and anti-fascist. For a time, critics viewed him as the head of a so-called "Auden Group" of left-wing UK poets, which also included Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day-Lewis. As his career went on, however, Auden grew skeptical of poetry's ability to effect social change. Even as Auden's work became increasingly personal and spiritual, it remained at the forefront of English-language literary culture, much as W. B. Yeats's had been throughout the previous generation.
Historical Context
Auden wrote "Lullaby" about two years before the outbreak of World War II, which began with the Nazi invasion of Poland. Although the invasion itself was shocking, flying in the face of the 1938 Munich Agreement that had sought to contain Adolf Hitler and Germany's territorial expansion, the war itself was not particularly surprising to many observers of the time. The conflict between fascist and left-wing/democratic forces had already sparked the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the aggression of fascist dictators had already embroiled Europe in an intense diplomatic crisis.
Hitler's ascent to power in 1933 was part of an era of European history marked by the rise of fascist governments. A political philosophy defined by dictatorial power, political violence, and intense nationalism, fascism led to rampant militarism and Germany's conquest of surrounding countries, including Austria and Czechoslovakia. Initially, other European powers, like France and England, sought to control the Nazis' violent expansion through policies of appeasement rather than confrontation. Hitler's invasion of Poland marked the end of that approach. Ultimately, World War II became a global conflict spanning multiple continents; by the war's conclusion, 40 to 60 million people had died.
Though primarily a love poem on universal themes, "Lullaby" is set against the backdrop of this violent period. It hints at its historical context in lines 24-28:
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, [...]These "fashionable madmen" might include anyone from dictators themselves (e.g., Hitler, the Soviet Union's Josef Stalin, and Spain's Francisco Franco) to the ideologues who supported them. Their madness, the speaker warns, will come at a terrible "cost," which the world will have to pay in full.
Auden was an openly gay man at a time when homosexuality was heavily stigmatized and criminalized, both in the UK (his native country) and the U.S. (his adopted country from 1939 on). The scholar Roz Kaveney has written of "Lullaby" that it "is not explicitly a gay poem in the contemporary usage of the term, but it is undoubtedly a queer one." Rather than following the conventions of heterosexual love poetry—which historically has included or implied promises of long-term "fidelity"—it celebrates a casual ("faithless") romantic encounter or fling. Critics have generally assumed that the lover in the poem is both male and young (hence the framing of the love song as a "Lullaby," which a parent would traditionally sing to a child). Auden felt that living and writing as a gay man was itself a kind of resistance to fascism, which persecuted queer sexuality in all its forms.
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More “Lullaby” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to historian and author Simon Schama read "Lullaby" and explain why it makes him cry.
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The Poet's Life — A biography of W. H. Auden at Poetry Foundation.
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A Celebration of Auden — A tribute to Auden's life and career, via the UK's South Bank Show.
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An Auden Documentary — Watch a BBC film about the poet.
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Auden and Modern UK Poets — An essay on the wider influence of 20th-century UK poets, including Auden.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by W. H. Auden
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