Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LETTER TO SICILIAN VINEDRESSER SENT FROM EGYPT WITH ... ROBE OF TISSUE, by THOMAS STURGE MOORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LETTER TO SICILIAN VINEDRESSER SENT FROM EGYPT WITH ... ROBE OF TISSUE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Put out to sea, if wine thou wouldest make
Last Line: Like a stripped child fain in the sea to dip.
Alternate Author Name(s): Moore, T. Sturge
Subject(s): Greece; Greeks


PUT out to sea, if wine thou wouldest make
Such as is made in Cos: when open boat
May safely launch, advice of pilots take;
And find the deepest bottom, most remote
From all encroachment of the crumbling shore,
Where no fresh stream tempers the rich salt wave,
Forcing rash sweetness on sage ocean's brine;
As youthful shepherds pour
Their first love forth to Battos gnarled and grave,
Fooling shrewd age to bless some fond design.

Not after storm! but when, for a long spell,
No white-maned horse has raced across the blue,
Put from the beach! lest troubled be the well..
Less pure thy draught than from such depth were due.
Fast close thy largest jars, prepared and clean!
Weight each a buoyant womb down through the flood,
Far down! then, with a cord the lid remove,
And it will fill unseen,
Swift as a heart Love smites sucks back the blood:
This bubbles, deeper born than sighs, shall prove.

If thy bowed shoulders ache, as thou dost haul..
Those groan who climb with rich ore from the mine;
Labour untold round Ilion girt a wall;
A god toiled that Achilles' arms might shine;
Think of these things and double knit thy will!
Then, should the sun be hot on thy return,
Cover thy jars with piles of bladder weed,
Dripping, and fragrant still
From sea-wolds where it grows like bracken-fern:
A grapnel dragged will soon supply thy need.

Home to a tun convey thy precious freight!
Wherein, for thirty days, it should abide,
Closed, yet not quite closed from the air, and wait
While, through dim stillness, slowly doth subside
Thick sediment. The humour of a day
Which has defeated youth and health and joy,
Down, through a dreamless sleep, will settle thus,
Till riseth maiden gay
Set free from all glooms past..or else a boy
Once more a school-friend worthy Troilus.

Yet to such cool wood tank some dream might dip:
Vision of Aphrodite sunk to sleep,
Or of some sailor let down from a ship,
Young, dead, and lovely, while across the deep,
Through the calm night, hoarsely his comrades chaunt..
So far at sea, they cannot reach the land
To lay him perfect in the warm brown earth.
Pray that such dreams there haunt!
While, through damp darkness, where thy tun doth stand,
Cold salamanders sidle round its girth.

Gently draw off the clear and tomb it yet
For other twenty days, in cedarn casks!
Where through trance, surely, prophecy will set;
As, dedicated to light temple-tasks,
The young priest dreams the unknown mystery.
Through Ariadne, knelt disconsolate
In the sea margin, so welled back and throbbed
A nuptial promise: she
Turned; and, half-choked through dewy glens, some great,
Some magic drone of revel coming sobbed.

Of glorious fruit, indeed, must be thy choice,
Such as has fully ripened on the branch,
Such as due rain, then sunshine, made rejoice,
Which, pulped and coloured, now deep bloom doth blanch;
Clusters like odes for victors in the games,
Strophe on strophe globed, pure nectar all!
Spread such to dry..if Helios grant thee grace,
Exposed unto his flames
Two days, or, if not, three; or, should rain fall,
Stretch them on hurdles in the house four days.

Grapes are not sharded chestnuts, which the tree
Lets fall to burst them on the ground, where red
Rolls forth the fruit, from white-lined wards set free,
And all undamaged glows 'mid husks it shed;
Nay, they are soft and should be singly stripped
From off the bunch, by maiden's dainty hand,
Then dropped through the cool silent depth to sink
(Coy, as herself hath slipped,
Bathing, from shelves in caves along the strand)
Till round each dark grape water barely wink;

Since some nine measures of sea-water fill
A butt of fifty, ere the plump fruit peep,
(Like sombre dolphin shoals when nights are still,
Which penned in Proteus' wizard circle sleep,
Where 'twixt them glinting curves of silver glance
If Zephyr, dimpling dark calm, count them o'er)
Thus for two days let the fruit soak, then tread!
While bare-legged bumkins dance,
Arched spouts will from the bursting presses pour,
And gurgling rills towards the vats run red.

Meanwhile the maidens, each with wooden rake,
Drag back the skins and laugh at aprons splashed;
Or youths rest, boasting how their brown arms ache,
So fast their shovels for so long have flashed,
Baffling their comrades' legs with mound and heap.
Double their labour! still the happier they,
Who at this genial task wear out long hours,
Till vast night round them creep,
When soon the torch-light dance whirls them away;
For gods who love wine treble all their powers.

Iacchus is the always grateful god!
His vineyards are more fair than gardens far;
Hanging, like those of Babylon, they nod
O'er each Ionian cliff and hill-side scar!
While Cypris lends him saltness, depth, and peace;
The brown earth yields him sap for richest green;
And he has borrowed laughter from the sky;
Wildness from winds; and bees
Bring honey. Then choose casks which thou hast seen
Are leakless, very wholesome, and quite dry!

At regal tables often a pledged guest,
I can assure thee, having travelled much,
That Coan vintage easily is best.
Faint not before the toil! this wine is such
As tempteth princes launch long pirate barks;..
From which may Zeus protect Sicilian bays,
And, ere long, me safe home from Egypt bring,
Letting no black-sailed sharks
Scent this king's gifts, for whom I sweeten praise
With those same songs thou didst to Chloe sing!

I wrote them 'neath the vine-cloaked elm, for thee.
Recall those nights! our couches were a load
Of scented lentisk; upward, tree by tree,
Thy father's orchard sloped, and past us flowed
A stream sluiced for his vineyards; when, above,
The apples fell, they on to us were rolled,
But kept us not awake. O Laco, own
How thou didst rave of love!
Now art thou staid, thy son is three years old;
But I, who made thee love-songs, live alone.

Muse thou at dawn o'er thy yet slumbering wife!
Not chary of her best was nature there,
Who, though a third of her full gift of life
Was spent, still added beauties still more rare;
What calm slow days, what holy sleep at night,
Evolved her for long twilight trystings fraught
With panic blushes and tip-toe surmise:
And then, what mystic might
All, with a crowning boon, through travail brought!
Consider this and give thy best likewise!

Falter, and even contentment will taste flat!
Welcome me, Laco, with this liquid glee!
I see that red face under thy straw hat,
I see thy house, thy vineyards, Sicily!
Thou dost demur, good but too easy friend!
Come, put those doubts away! thou hast strong lads,
Brave wenches; on the steep beach lolls thy ship
Where vine-clad slopes descend,
Sheltering our bay, that headlong rillet glads,
Like a stripped child fain in the sea to dip.





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