Classic Poem

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 pantomime;
Funeral, and steeple-chime;
Infant playing with a skull;
Morning fair, and stormwrecked 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,
Interwreathed with myrtles new,
Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
And my couch a low grass tomb.