W. H. Auden, Lay your sleeping head, my love.../ Wtul śpiące czoło...

Constantin Brancusi, Sleeping Muse, bronze 1909

Wtul śpiące czoło, miła

Ludzka istoto, w niewierne

Me ramię. Czas i maligna

Strawią swoistą piękność

Uważnych dzieci; mogiła

Za ulotnością przemawia.

Lecz niech aż po brzask me ramię

Otula żywe stworzenie

Śmiertelne, winne, lecz dla mnie

Piękne najdoskonalej.

Dusza i ciało nie znają

Granic: kochankom, co na jej

Przychylnym czarownym wzgórzu

W swym upojeniu trwają,

Wenus śle mroczną wizję

Nadziemskiej nadziei, wspólnoty,

Powszechnej miłości; wówczas

Budzi się w skałach i lodzie,

abstrakcyjnie olśniona,

Cielesna ekstaza ascety.

Wierność i zaufanie,

Gdy minie północ, w ciszy

Gasną jak drgania dzwonu.

Modni szaleńcy podnoszą

Głos, recytując nudnie:

Każdy grosz z tego kosztu,

Przez straszne karty wieszczony,

Przyjdzie spłacić, lecz odtąd

Szept już nie pójdzie na stratę,

Spojrzenie, myśl ani dotyk.

Piękności, północ, czar ginie.

Niech wiatry świtu, dmące

Nad śniącym czołem, ukażą

Życzliwy dzień, który serce  

Walące i oko przyjmie.

Niechaj ci świat doczesności

Wystarczy. W południa suszy

Niech żywią cię moce bezwiedne,

Niech przejdziesz przez noce zniewag

Pod okiem ludzkiej miłości. 

Musical solution - from Henry Green's "Caught"

When he was sixteen a friend of the family, a man who studied church windows, had taken them round just under those in the choir of Tewkesbury Abbey, on a ledge about forty feet from the ground. This step which ran along in the thickness of the walls was no more than a yard in width and had nothing to the side, no balustrade, no rail. Every so often they had to get by cords, cutting across from each window down to the floor that seemed so far beneath. These were the means by which panels in the glass would be open to ventilate the choir. As they went round, each one in turn had to take hold of a cord with his right hand to step over left leg first, and then, in his own case, as he faced right to bring his right leg over, he had that terror of the urge to leap, his back to deep violet and yellow Bible stories on the glass, his eyes reluctant over the whole grey stretch of the Abbey until they were drawn, abruptly as to a chasm, inevitably, and so far beneath, down to the floor hemmed with pews, that height calling on the pulses and he did not know why to his ears, down to dropped stone flags over which sunlight had cast the colour in each window, the colour it seemed his blood had turned. 

At the station they use to pitch the escape and climb up that sharply narrowing, rattling ladder, red, but it would by now be too dark to see, up to the head painted white for work at night with, in this dark a voice from the sea bellowing advice below, all of them getting out of breath, fumbling, some telling themselves, and even each other, not to look down. After the first few times they were handy at it, but in the beginning, and most of all before they had been sent up, he would get wet in the seat of his trousers as he walked past the half seen tower at six o'clock, unlike by more than the time of the day that other under which, on sun-laden evenings, the windows for seven hundred years had stained the flags, as it might be with coward's blood.

What I admire about Henry Green's writing is genuinely musical quality it has about it. In the quotation above, which is but a part of larger piece with interwined colours, sounds, persons, ages and emotions, the cords in the Abbey make me think of chords, colours are accompanied with sounds, mood is changed from exquisite violet and yellow churchy with Eucharistic echo (blood turned into colour) to harsh red and white and wet trousers of wartime fire station to be masterfully clasped by coward's blood stained flags.

And again, 60 pages later, the same colour theme appears in skillful variations:

The large room, part of disused West-end motor sale-room, had the plate-glass windows which, so polished once, had been coated with black paint. As with all showrooms, it was overheated, and because there wee no civilian fires to fight the men were discouraged, in daytime, from opening what few doors had been left by the sandbagging for fear the public might be led to protest at their idleness. During black-out hours it was impossible to have any ventilation. They were not allowed to turn down the radiators because a General Order had been circulated which drew attention to the danger of burst pipes. All day long they spent under powerful electric lamps, however brilliantly the sun might shine on snow laid over gardens across the way. 

The room was painted yellow orange. The floor was done with flags of artificial stone which, whatever the scrubbing, gave off a thick grey dust. All, as they sat in this bare room, had purple shadows hacked out beneath their eyebrows, chins and noses by the naked, hot spotlights in the orange ceiling. 

The library at Richard's home was old, long and low. Its daylight came from beneath a vast cedar on the lawn. The walls were covered by books as dark as their oak shelves. Where it could not be seen without getting up to look, a grandfather clock tick-tocked. 

At night shutters, and in front of these, curtains covered by a Morris design, closed all sound of the cedar out as it groaned under the weight of snow or, in other weather, absolutely black in moonlight as the wind outside swept through and through.

In the first piece the main emotion is fear contrasted with peaceful solemnity of church (and then with magical air of toy-shop where a little boy get lost). In the second one there is a tension between hot (with all sexual connotations), overcrowded, blatant showroom and solitary and calm countryhouse library. The description of showroom is full of visual elements and devoid of sound, and picture of library is audible but not visible. The text is very clear and restraint - I may say that Henry Green's touch is very controlled and absolutely flawless.