Each with all propitious Time Like the dancers' ordered band, Or else alternated; Adding by their mutual gage, Solitary fancies go Short-lived wandering to and fro, Most like to bachelors, Or an ungiven maid, Not ancestors, With no posterity to make the lie afraid, Or keep truth undecayed. Perfect-paired as eagle's wings, Justice is the rhyme of things; Trade and counting use The self-same tuneful muse; And Nemesis, Who with even matches odd, Who athwart space redresses Fills the just period, And finishes the song. Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife, BACCHUS. BRING me wine, but wine which never grew Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through Suffer no savor of the earth to scape. Let its grapes the morn salute From a nocturnal root, Which feels the acrid juice Of Styx and Erebus; And turns the woe of Night, By its own craft, to a more rich delight. We buy ashes for bread; We buy diluted wine; Give me of the true, Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled Among the silver hills of heaven Draw everlasting dew; Wine of wine, Blood of the world, Form of forms, and mould of statures, That I intoxicated, And by the draught assimilated, May float at pleasure through all natures; The bird-language rightly spell, And that which roses say so well. Wine that is shed Like the torrents of the sun Up the horizon walls, Or like the Atlantic streams, which run When the South Sea calls. Water and bread, Food which needs no transmuting, Food which teach and reason can. Wine which Music is, Music and wine are one, That I, drinking this, Shall hear far Chaos talk with me; Kings unborn shall walk with me; Quickened so, will I unlock Every crypt of every rock. I thank the joyful juice For all I know; Of the ancient being blow, And seeming-solid walls of use Open and flow. Pour, Bacchus the remembering wine; Retrieve the loss of me and mine! Vine for vine be antidote, And the grape requite the lote ! The memory of ages quenched; Give them again to shine; Let wine repair what this undid; Refresh the faded tints, Recut the aged prints, And write my old adventures with the pen Upon the tablets blue, The dancing Pleiads and eternal men. MEROPS. WHAT care I, so they stand the same, How long the power to give them name Thus far to-day your favors reach, Space grants beyond his fated road TREES in groves, Kine in droves, SAADI. In ocean sport the scaly herds, God, who gave to him the lyre, Ever, when twain together play, Many may come, But one shall sing; Two touch the string, The harp is dumb. Though there come a million, Wise Saadi dwells alone. Yet Saadi loved the race of men, No churl, immured in cave or den; In bower and hall He wants them all, Nor can dispense With Persia for his audience; |