Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CUP OF MENALCHUS, by PAUL FORT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CUP OF MENALCHUS, by                    
First Line: Tityrus, on my cup warmly the season glows! Beneficent tityrus
Last Line: Discourse. . . . Hum! Hum! . . . The season's warm on my cup, good tityrus!
Subject(s): Cups; Drinks & Drinking; Life; Love; Wine


Tityrus, on my cup warmly the season glows! Beneficent Tityrus, the wine you
pour for me in its scented boxwood bowl doth range most amorously, like showery
pearls that poise in the bosom of a rose.

For round its bowl are wrought bright figures manifold, which vividly depict
such gay adventuring, the beverage, clear wine or crystal from the spring,
rejoices, through itself such pageants to behold.

And oft their sight consoles my ennui, as I quaff, more than the Sabine wine so
fresh from cups of wood. -- Beneficent Tityrus, I have drunk. The wine is good.
Follow my finger's end, regard, and learn to laugh.

Here, first, I've shown a tree and, 'neath its leafy tent, four charming, naked
babes, chubby and innocent, like monkeys who rehearse their master's every move,
mimic the gesturings invented by young love.

Tityrus dost thou know how, furious and blind, tyrannous love subdues all
amorous mankind? Look, Tityrus. Approach. Your artist eyes to please, carved to
the life behold the virtuous Hercules.

He, thread by thread, unwinds, beneath the moon's pale mask, that which he wove
by day under importunate eyes. At his lady's feet his club is dropped. Relaxed
he lies, profoundly sunk in sleep above his little task.

O'er all the amorous swains Love triumphs. By his doom Phoebus Apollo, god of
circling planets, came a shepherd's humble cloak eagerly to assume. My great-
coat is portrayed above his shoulder's flame.

See, and 'tis I, Menalchus, -- here, is it not well done? -- who seize the reins
and houp! drive headlong up the sky clear to the goblet's brim the coursers of
the sun. Yet I cling to my car o'erturned in heaven's profundity.

He who goes hurtling down is not I, be it understood. 'Tis Phaeton, indeed, at
whom Menalchus mocks. Sheer to my flagon's depths see how he falls, and shocks,
crushing his hapless head, on its sonorous wood.

At her open casement there fair Danae inclines, and, trembling all at once, her
heart with joy astir, at a dawn in whose dim light a golden shower shines, takes
to her passionate breast the minted Jupiter.

Do but behold this stream drawn with an art so true one hears the gentle strain
its flowing waters sing. Nude Psyche, plunged waist deep in the wave and
murmuring, combs out her golden hair, the breeze, the vaulting blue.

Furling, unfurling, furling their wings three cupids fair, flutter about her
head, dazed by so sweet a prize, one by the foot made fast is tangled in her
hair. One burns his tongue with beams from those resplendent eyes.

The third, through the wave perceiving the marvel of a thigh, recurling tumbled
locks where golden lustres gleam, and sleeking ruffled plumes, plunges
besottedly, and drowns his silly self in the centre of the stream.

With luminous belly, see, 'neath branches beauteous, tippling from that great
cask the fat Silenus pours, Bacchus, god of fruitful vines. -- But 'tis enough
discourse. . . . Hum! Hum! . . . the season's warm on my cup, good Tityrus!





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