Be drunk, always. Nothing else matters; this is our sole concern. To ease the pain as Time's dread burden weighs down upon your shoulders and crushes you to earth, you must be drunk without respite. Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But be drunk. And if sometimes, on the steps of palaces, on the green grass in a ditch, in the dreary solitude of your room, you should wake and find your drunkenness half over or fully gone, ask of wind or wave, of star or bird or clock, ask of all that flies, of all that sighs, moves, sings, or speaks, ask them what time it is; and wind, wave, star, bird, or clock will answer: "It is time to be drunk! To throw off the chains and martyrdom of Time, be drunk; be drunk eternally! With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please." | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ON STURMINSTER FOOT-BRIDGE by THOMAS HARDY TO MY CHILDREN: 3 by DOLLIE CAROLINE MAITLAND RADFORD PEARLS OF THE FAITH: 80, 81. GHAFOOR, MUNTAKIM by EDWIN ARNOLD ASOLANDO: REVERIE by ROBERT BROWNING CHAMPLAIN AND LAKE CHAMPLAIN by DANIEL LEAVENS CADY AT THE ROADHOUSE: IN MEMORY OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON by BLISS CARMAN |