To every foot its antipode;

Each color with its counter glowed;
To every tone beat answering tones,
Higher or graver;

Flavor gladly blends with flavor;
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 dancer's 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,

BRING me wine, but wine which never grew

In the belly of the grape,

Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through Under the Andes to the Cape,

Suffered no savor of the earth to scape.

Let its grapes the morn salute

From a nocturnal root,

Which feels the acrid juice

Of Styx and Erebus;

And turns the woe 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,

Or like the Atlantic streams, which run

When the South Sea calls.

Water and bread,

Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting

Wine which is already man,

Food which teach and reason can.

Wine which Music is,

Music and wine are one,

That I, drinking this,

Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;

Kings unborn shall walk with me;

And the poor grass shall plot and plan What it will do when it is man.

Quickened so, will I unlock

Every crypt of every rock.

I thank the joyful juice
For all I know;-

Winds of remembering

Of the ancient being blow,

And seeming-solid walls of use
Open and flow.

Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine!

Vine for vine be antidote,

And the grape requite the lote!
Haste to cure the old despair,-

Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,

The memory of ages quenched;
Give them again to shine;

Let wine repair what this undid;
And where the infection slid,
A dazzling memory revive;
Refresh the faded tints,

Recut the aged prints,

And write my old adventures with the pen
Which on the first day drew,

Upon the tablets blue,

The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.

GRACE

How much, Preventing God! how much I owe
To the defences thou hast round me set:
Example, custom, fear, occasion slow,-
These scorned bondmen were my parapet.
I dare not peep over this parapet.

To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below,
The depths of sin to which I had descended,
Had not these me against myself defended.

MEROPS

WHAT care I, so they stand the same,-
Things of the heavenly mind,—

How long the power to give them name
Tarries yet behind?

Thus far to-day your favors reach,
O fair, appeasing presences!
Ye taught my lips a single speech
And a thousand silences.

Space grants beyond his fated road
No inch to the god of day;
And copious language still bestowed
One word, no more, to say.

HYMN

SUNG AT THE COMPLETION OF THE CONCORD MONUMENT

April 19, 1836

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,

Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept

Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
To die, or leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

ODE

INSCRIBED TO W. H. CHANNING

THOUGH loath to grieve

The evil time's sole patriot,

I cannot leave

My honeyed thought