The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems/Drinking Song
For works with similar titles, see Drinking Song.
DRINKING SONG.
INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER.
Come, old friend! sit down and listen!From the pitcher, placed between us,How the waters laugh and glistenIn the head of old Silenus!
Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,Led by his inebriate Satyrs;On his breast his head is sunken,Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;Ivy crowns that brow supernalAs the forehead of Apollo,And possessing youth eternal.
Round about him, fair Bacchantes,Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante'sVineyards, sing delirious verses.
Thus he won, through all the nations,Bloodless victories, and the farmerBore, as trophies and oblations,Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.
Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,Much this mystic throng expresses:Bacchus was the type of vigor,And Silenus of excesses.
These are ancient ethnic revels,Of a faith long since forsaken;Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.
Now to rivulets from the mountainsPoint the rods of fortune-tellers;Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,—Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.
Claudius, though he sang of flagonsAnd huge tankards filled with Rhenish,From that fiery blood of dragonsNever would his own replenish.
Even Redi, though he chauntedBacchus in the Tuscan valleys,Never drank the wine he vauntedIn his dithyrambic sallies.
Then with water fill the pitcherWreathed about with classic fables;Ne'er Falernian threw a richerLight upon Lucullus' tables.
Come, old friend, sit down and listen!As it passes thus between us,How its wavelets laugh and glistenIn the head of old Silenus!