Poems (Howard)/The Smell of Grapes
The Smell of Grapes.
Oh! fine as musk, invisible, Impalpable—as odors are—Luxurious and wonderful As essence from those isles afar Where sweet amomum, cinnamon, And all delicious spices grow, Is their perfume, for dew and sun And rain combine to make it so.
And while beneath an autumn sky The atmosphere is redolent, Within my hammock long I lie, And breathe the grapes' unrivaled scent;Then close my eyes and dream I see, Beyond Atlantic's broad expanse, The vineyard slopes of Italy, Or vintages of happy France.
Judea's hills before me rise, That "milk-and-honey" land renowned In Bible story, where the spies The famous "grapes of Eshcol" found. Upon the air of Palestine What must have been the burden great Of fragrance, equaling the mean Of their recorded size and weight!
I live a charming period o'er Of reveling in sunny Spain, And view, as from Gibraltar's shore, Her fields of waving golden grain; Her castles, villas, fair coquettes, Her honest bourgeois, peasantry, And oh! the sight one ne'er forgets— Her wine-producing husbandry.
But, looking from my casement near, At ten o'clock, down in the shade, Instead of some gay cavalier To charm me with a serenade, What are those figures, one by one, With stealthy steps and ragged shapes? Why, by "the smell" I might have known They are the boys who steal my grapes!