Lullaby Summary & Analysis
by W. H. Auden

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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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