W. H. Auden
Look, Stranger! (1936)
XVI
May with its light behaving
Stirs vessel, eye and limb,
The singular and sad
Are willing to recover,
And to the swan-delighting river
The careless picnics come
In living white and red.

The dead remote and hooded
In their enclosures rest; but we
From their vague woods have broken,
Forests where children meet
And the white angel-vampires flit;
We Stand with shaded eye,
The dangerous apple taken.

The real world lies before us;
Animal motions of the young,
The common wish for death,
The pleasured and the haunted;
The dying master sinks tormented
In his admirers’ ring,
The unjust walk the earth.

And love that makes impatient
The tortoise and the roe, and lays
The blonde beside the dark,
Urges upon our blood,
Before the evil and the good
How insufficient is
The endearment and look.