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This is the first class of a course on the close reading of poetry. \xa0It will consist, at least for the first half, of intense reading of poems for as long as is necessary, with no time pressure. \xa0It's not a course designed to get you reading a lot; it's designed to get you thinking a lot. \xa0We start out with some lullabies, first with Auden's\n\nLullaby\n\nLay your sleeping head, my love,\n\nHuman on my faithless arm;\n\nTime and fevers burn away\n\nIndividual beauty from\n\nThoughtful children, and the grave\n\nProves the child ephermeral:\n\nBut in my arms till break of day\n\nLet the living creature lie,\n\nMortal, guilty, but to me\n\nThe entirely beautiful.\n\nSoul and body have no bounds:\n\nTo lovers as they lie upon\n\nHer tolerant enchanted slope\n\nIn their ordinary swoon,\n\nGrave the vision Venus sends\n\nOf supernatural sympathy,\n\nUniversal love and hope;\n\nWhile an abstract insight wakes\n\nAmong the glaciers and the rocks\n\nThe hermit\u2019s sensual ecstasy.\n\nCertainty, fidelity\n\nOn the stroke of midnight pass\n\nLike vibrations of a bell,\n\nAnd fashionable madmen raise\n\nTheir pedantic boring cry:\n\nEvery farthing of the cost,\n\nAll the dreadful cards foretell,\n\nShall be paid, but from this night\n\nNot a whisper, not a thought,\n\nNot a kiss nor look be lost.\n\nBeauty, midnight, vision dies:\n\nLet the winds of dawn that blow\n\nSoftly round your dreaming head\n\nSuch a day of sweetness show\n\nEye and knocking heart may bless.\n\nFind the mortal world enough;\n\nNoons of dryness see you fed\n\nBy the involuntary powers,\n\nNights of insult let you pass\n\nWatched by every human love.