Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow

« Under the flag 

Of each his faction, they to battle bring 

Their embryon atoms. » — Milton

Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow,

       Lethe’s weed and Hermes’ feather;
Come today, and come tomorrow,
       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 burn under, 
       And a giggle at a wonder;
       Visage sage at pantomine; 
       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-dressed
       With the aspics 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;
       O 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,
       Interwreath’d with myrtles new;
       Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
       And my couch a low grass-tomb.






(John Keats.)