As no one can precisely say when day gives way to night
Though clearly a distinction might be made
So artifice and nature remain distinct
And as lovers revelers singers of matins and vespers love most
The passing threshold times of dawn and dusk
When the world is neither this nor that but all contraries met
So great beauty dwells in those things
That partake both of intellect and flesh
And thus in dreams which check the promptings of the will
We mighty playwrights be and cunning shows contrive
So rightly spake the sage of Weimar dreamer of the Faust
And thus the costumed flowers the pollinators beguile
And thus the little birds triumph with potency of song
And falling rain advises with the force of sapient speech
And though but rare to see Aurora Borealis’ enchanted curtains
Reveal and not conceal the theatrical celestial stage
And promise and deliver an Odyssey in space
From which vantage earth appears
A floor of carpets and mosaics curiously wrought
And especially those forests that give way imperceptibly
To grassland where first humans walked
And deathless sing we day and night
With our forbears in the trees