Page:Poems, Household Edition, Emerson, 1904.djvu/160

124 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.