Page:Poems Cook.djvu/163

Their loud and tuneless laugh would tell
 Of a hot and reeling brain;
Their right arms trembled, and red wine fell
 Like blood on a battle-plain.
The youth would play the chattering ape,
 And the gray-hair'd one would let
The foul and sickening jest escape
 Till I've loathed the lips I've met;
And the swine in the dust, or the wolf on its prey,
Gave less of sheer disgust than they.

The drunkard has fill'd me again and again
 'Mid the roar of a frantic din;
Till the starting eyeballs told his brain.
 Was an Etna pile within
Oh! sad is the work that I have done
 In the hands of the sot and fool;
Cursed and dark is the fame I have won,
 As Death's most powerful tool:
And I own that those who greet my rim
Too oft, will find their bane on the brim.

But all the golden Goblet has wrought
 Is not of the evil kind;
I have helped the creature of mighty thought,
 And quicken'd the Godlike mind.
As gems of first water may lie in the shade,
 And no lustre be known to live,
Till the kiss of the noontide beam has betray'd
 What a glorious sheen they can give:
So, the breast may hold fire that none can see,
Till it meet the sun-ray shed by me.

I have burst the spirit's moody trance,
 And woke it to mirth and wit;
Till the soul would dance in every glance
 Of eyes that were rapture-lit.

147