Benjamin Britten
On a poet’s lips I slept
On a poet's lips I slept
Dreaming like a love-adept
In the sound his breathing kept;
Nor seeks nor finds he mortal blisses
But feeds on the aëreal kisses
Of shapes that haunt thought's wildernesses
He will watch from dawn to gloom
The lake-reflected sun illume
The yellow bees in the ivy-bloom
Nor heed nor see, what things they be;
But from these create he can
Forms more real than living man
Nurslings of immortality!