A Song of Opposites

Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,
Lethe's weed and Hermes' feather ;
Come to-day, and come to-morrow,
I do love you both together!

I love to mark sad faces in fair weather;
And hear a merry laugh amid the thunder ;
Fair and foul I love together.
Meadows sweet where flames are under,
And a giggle at a wonder;
Visage sage at pantomime;
Funeral, and steeple-chime ;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and shipwreck'd hull ;
Nightshade with the woodbine kissing;
Serpents in red roses hissing;
Cleopatra regal-dress'd
With the aspic at her breast;
Dancing music, music sad,
Both together, sane and mad;
Muses bright and muses pale ;
Sombre Saturn, Momus hale;—
Laugh and sigh, and laugh again;
Oh the sweetness of the pain !
Muses bright, and muses pale,
Bare your faces of the veil ;
Let me see ; and let me write
Of the day, and of the night —
Both together: — let me slake
All my thirst for sweet heart-ache!
Let my bower be of yew,
Inter wreath 'd with myrtles new;
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass-tomb.