Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO A FAIR MAIDEN WHO BLADE ME SHUN WINE, by WILLIAM WATSON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO A FAIR MAIDEN WHO BLADE ME SHUN WINE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: And must I wholly banish hence
Last Line: To grace the praise of water.
Alternate Author Name(s): Watson, John William
Subject(s): Earth; Heaven; Muses; World; Paradise


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.





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