Bird, that from the nadir's floor,

To the zenith's top could soar,

The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length!

Nor, profane, affect to hit

Or compass that by meddling wit,

Which only the propitious mind

Publishes when 'tis inclined.

There are open hours

When the god's will sallies free,

And the dull idiot might see

The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;

Sudden, at unawares,

Self-moved fly-to the doors,

Nor sword of angels could reveal

What they conceal.

MERLIN.

II.

THE rhyme of the poet

Modulates the king's affairs,

Balance-loving nature

Made all things in pairs.

To every foot its antipode,

Each colour with its counter glowed,
Το every tone beat answering tones,
Higher or graver;

Flavour gladly blends with flavour;
Leaf answers leaf upon the bough,
And match the paired cotyledons.
Hands to hands, and feet to feet
In one body grooms and brides ;
Eldest rite, two married sides
In every mortal meet.

Light's far furnace shines,

Smelting balls and bars,

Forging double stars,

Glittering twins and trines.

The animals are sick with love,

Lovesick with rhyme ;

Each with all propitious Time

Into chorus wove.

Like the dancers' ordered band,

Thoughts come also hand in hand,

In equal couples mated,

Or else alternated,

Adding by their mutual gage

One to other health and age.

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

The partial wrong,

Fills the just period,

And finishes the song.

Subtle rhymes with ruin rife
Murmur in the house of life,
Sung by the Sisters as they spin;
In perfect time and measure, they
Build and unbuild our echoing clay,
As the two twilights of the day

Fold us music-drunken in.

BACCHUS.

BRING me wine, but wine which never grew

In the belly of the grape,

Or grew on vine whose taproots reaching through

Under the Andes to the Cape,

Suffered no savour of the world to 'scape.

Let its grapes the morn salute
From a nocturnal root

Which feels the acrid juice

Of Styx and Erebus,

And turns the wo 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;