Fragment: Welcome Joy, And Welcome Sorrow

by John Keats

    "Under the flag
    Of each his faction, they to battle bring
    Their embryo atoms."
    - Milton.


    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 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-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,
    Interwreath'd with myrtles new;
    Pines and lime-trees full in bloom,
    And my couch a low grass-tomb.