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Thursday, July 7, 2011

July 7

I think this is going to be a two-parter today, as I've finished one of my Thursday projects, but I'm not done stitching for the day.

These are the two projects as of 9 June.



And here's the completed Michey (bottom project in the above photo).



This was the free kit included with The World of Cross Stitch (magazine from the UK) Issue 25, November 1999. I'm not sure I'll keep the 'Merry Christmas' frame as there is nothing especially Christmasy about the piece. We shall see.

Lullaby

Lay your sleeping head, my love,
Human on my faithless arm;
Time and fevers burn away
Individual beauty from
Thoughtful children, and the grave
Proves the child ephemeral:
But in my arms till break of day
Let the living creature lie,
Mortal, guilty, but to me
The entirely beautiful.

Soul and body have no bounds:
To lovers as they lie upon
Her tolerant enchanted slope
In their ordinary swoon,
Grave the vision Venus sends
Of supernatural sympathy,
Universal love and hope;
While an abstract insight wakes
Anong the glaciers and the rocks
The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

Certainty, fidelity
On the stroke of mignight pass
Like vibrations of a bell,
And fashionable madmen raise
Their pedantic boring cry:
Every farthing of the cost,
All the dreaded cards foretell,
Shall be paid, but from this night
Not a whisper, not a thought,
Not a kiss nor look be lost.

Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
Let the winds of dawn that blow
Softly round your dreaming head
Such a day of sweetness show
Eye and knocking heart may bless,
Find the mortal world enough;
Noons of dryness see you fed
By the involuntary powers,
Nights of insult let you pass
Watched by every human love.

Wystan Hugh Auden
1907 - 1973

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