Merlin II

The rhyme of the poet     Modulates the king's affairs;     Balance-loving Nature     Made all things in pairs.     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 dancers' 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,     Who athwart space redresses     The partial wrong,     Fills the just period,     And finishes the song.     Subtle rhymes, with ruin rife,     Murmur in the house of life,     Sung by the Sisters as they spin;     In perfect time and measure they     Build and unbuild our echoing clay.     As the two twilights of the day     Fold us music-drunken in.