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The Poetical Works of John Keats/Fragment (2)

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For other versions of this work, see Welcome joy, and welcome sorrow.

The quote at the beginning of this piece is a version of some lines from Paradise Lost, Book 2, which read "Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring | Their embryon atoms: they around the flag⁠ | Of each his faction, in their several clans"

1995631The Poetical Works of John Keats — FragmentJohn Keats

FRAGMENT.

"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 pantomime;
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 and 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.