AND must I wholly banish hence These red and golden juices, And pay my vows to Abstinence, That pallidest of Muses? Must I impute caprice to Heaven? Its boons, must I pass by them, As if they were perversely given Only that I should fly them? Lady, I hold that Man grew great, And climbed to starry station, Urged evermore by delicate And fine intoxication. From little lordlier than the ape, Full slow had been his growing, Had not the Grape, the mighty Grape, Kept Evolution going. When through him first the vine-thrill ran, Then first his life was human! Then burgeoned all the soul of Man, And all the heart of Woman. His grand career was now begun, And naught could stay his crescence, Who quaffed the Summer and the Sun In liquefied quintessence, -- A distillation of the Day, That most divinely sated The very thirst the noontide ray Itself had generated. And so the ages broadened still, And still mankind ascended; And wise and foolish drank their fill And vowed the world was splendid; And poets, cool from heights serene, Or hot from passion's furnace, Found the unfailing Hippocrene In regions like Falernus. But here I pause. The theme is vast, The sacred spring abundant. One word -- I hold it to the last -- Makes all besides redundant: Had mortals lacked the gift of wine, O Earth's too earthless daughter, There had been no such lips as thine To grace the praise of water. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BALLADE OF WENCHES by FRANCOIS VILLON LIMBO by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE THE SHIP OF RIO by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE THE TEST by RALPH WALDO EMERSON MY PICTURE LEFT IN SCOTLAND by BEN JONSON THE CITY AT THE END OF THINGS by ARCHIBALD LAMPMAN LA BELLA BONA ROBA by RICHARD LOVELACE |