Heroic Poem in Praise of Wine

To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,

To welcome home mankind's mysterious friend

Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;

Wine, privilege of the completely free;

Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;

Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,

Awake, Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!

Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,

And on his front the little dancing flame

Which marked the God-head. Sing the Panther-team,

The gilded Thrysus twirling, and the gleam

Of cymbals through the darkness. Sing the drums.

He comes; the young renewer of Hellas comes!

The Seas await him. Those Aegean Seas

Roll from the dawning, ponderous, ill at ease,

In lifts of lead, whose cresting hardly breaks

To ghostly foam, when suddenly there awakes

A mountain glory inland. All the skies

Are luminous; and amid the sea bird cries

The mariner hears a morning breeze arise.

Then goes the Pageant forward. The sea-way

Silvers the feet of that august array

Trailing above the waters, through the airs;

And as they pass a wind before them bears

The quickening word, the influence magical.

The Islands have received it, marble-tall;

The long shores of the mainland. Something fills

The warm Euboean combes, the sacred hills

Of Aulis and of Argos. Still they move

Touching the City walls, the Temple grove,

Till, far upon the horizon-glint, a gleam

Of light, of trembling light, revealed they seem

Turned to a cloud, but to a cloud that shines,

And everywhere as they pass, the Vines! The Vines!

The Vines, the conquering Vines! And the Vine

breaths

Her savour through the upland, empty heaths

Of treeless wastes; the Vines have come to where

The dark Pelasgian steep defends the lair

Of the wolf's hiding; to the empty fields

By Aufidus, the dry campaign that yields

No harvest for the husbandman, but now

Shall bear a nobler foison than the plough;

To where, festooned along the tall elm trees,

Tendrils are mirrored in Tyrrhenian seas;

To where the South awaits them; even to where

Stark, African informed of burning air,

Upturned to Heaven the broad Hipponian plain

Extends luxurious and invites the main.

Guelma's a mother: barren Thaspsa breeds;

And northward in the valleys, next the meads

That sleep by misty river banks, the Vines

Have struck to spread below the solemn pines.

The Vines are on the roof-trees. All the Shrines

And Homes of men are consecrate with Vines.

And now the task of that triumphant day

Has reached to victory. In the reddening ray

With all his train, from hard Iberian lands

Fulfilled, apparent, that Creator stands

Halted on Atlas. Far Beneath him, far,

The strength of Ocean darkening and the star

Beyond all shores. There is a silence made.

It glorifies: and the gigantic shade

Of Hercules adores him from the West.

Dead Lucre: burnt Ambition: Wine is best.

But what are these that from the outer murk

Of dense mephitic vapours creeping lurk

To breathe foul airs from that corrupted well

Which oozes slime along the floor of Hell?

These are the stricken palsied brood of sin

In whose vile veins, poor, poisonous and thin,

Decoctions of embittered hatreds crawl:

These are the Water-Drinkers, cursed all!

On what gin-sodden Hags, what flaccid sires

Bred these White Slugs from what exhaust desires?

In what close prison's horror were their wiles

Watched by what tyrant power with evil smiles;

Or in what caverns, blocked from grace and air

Received they, then, the mandates of despair?

What! Must our race, our tragic race, that roam

All exiled from our first, and final, home:

That in one moment of temptation lost

Our heritage, and now wander, hunger-tost

Beyond the Gates (still speaking with our eyes

For ever of remembered Paradise),

Must we with every gift accepted, still,

With every joy, receive attendant ill?

Must some lewd evil follow all our good

And muttering dog our brief beatitude?

A primal doom, inexorable, wise,

Permitted, ordered, even these to rise.

Even in the shadow of so bright a Lord

Must swarm and propagate the filthy horde

Debased, accursed I say, abhorrent and abhorred.

Accursed and curse-bestowing. For whosoe'er

Shall suffer their contagion, everywhere

Falls from the estate of man and finds his end

To the mere beverage of the beast condemned.

For such as these in vain the Rhine has rolled

Imperial centuries by hills of gold;

For such as these the flashing Rhone shall rage

In vain its lightning through the Hermitage

Or level-browed divine Touraine receive

The tribute of her vintages at eve.

For such as these Burgundian heats in vain

Swell the rich slope or load the empurpled plain.

Bootless for such as these the mighty task

Of bottling God the Father in a flask

And leading all Creation down distilled

To one small ardent sphere immensely filled.

With memories empty, with experience null,

With vapid eye-balls meaningless and dull

They pass unblest through the unfruitful light;

And when we open the bronze doors of Night,

When we in high carousal, we reclined,

Spur up to Heaven the still ascending mind,

Pass with the all inspiring, to and fro,

The torch of genius and the Muse's glow,

They, lifeless, stare at vacancy alone

Or plan mean traffic, or repeat their moan.

We, when repose demands us, welcomed are

In young white arms, like our great Exemplar

Who, wearied with creation, takes his rest

And sinks to sleep on Ariadne's breast.

They through the darkness into darkness press

Despised, abandoned and companionless.

And when the course of either's sleep has run

We leap to life like heralds of the sun;

We from the couch in roseate mornings gay

Salute as equals the exultant day

While they, the unworthy, unrewarded, they

The dank despisers of the Vine, arise

To watch grey dawns and mourn indifferent skies.

Forget them! Form the Dionysian ring

And pulse the ground, and Io, Io, sing.

Father Lenaean, to whom our strength belongs,

Our loves, our wars, our laughter and our songs,

Remember our inheritance, who praise

Your glory in these last unhappy days

When beauty sickens and a muddied robe

Of baseness fouls the universal globe.

Though all the Gods indignant and their train

Abandon ruined man, do thou remain!

By thee the vesture of our life was made,

The Embattled Gate, the lordly Colonnade,

The woven fabric's gracious hues, the sound

Of trumpets, and the quivering fountain-round,

And, indestructible, the Arch, and, high,

The Shaft of Stone that stands against the sky,

And, last, the guardian-genius of them, Rhyme,

Come from beyond the world to conquer time:

All these are thine, Lenaean.

By thee do seers the inward light discern;

By thee the statue lives, the Gods return;

By thee the thunder and the falling foam

Of loud Acquoria's torrent call to Rome;

Alba rejoices in a thousand springs,

Gensano laughs, and Orvieto sings…

But, Ah! With Orvieto, with that name

Of dark, Eturian, subterranean flame

The years dissolve. I am standing in that hour

Of majesty Septembral, and the power

Which swells the clusters when the nights are still

With autumn stars on Orvieto hill.

Had these been mine, Ausonian Muse, to know

The large contented oxen heaving slow;

To count my sheaves at harvest; so to spend

Perfected days in peace until the end;

With every evening's dust of gold to hear

The bells upon the pasture height, the clear

Full horn of herdsmen gathering in the kine

To ancient byres in hamlets Appenine,

And crown abundant age with generous ease:

Had these, Ausonian Muse, had these, had these…..

But since I would not, since I could not stay,

Let me remember even in this my day

How, when the ephemeral vision's lure is past

All, all, must face their Passion at the last

Was there not one that did to Heaven complain

How, driving through the midnight and the rain,

He struck, the Atlantic seethe and surge before,

Wrecked in the North along a lonely shore

To make the lights of home and hear his name no

more.

Was there not one that from a desperate field

Rode with no guerdon but a rifted shield;

A name disherited; a broken sword;

Wounds unrenowned; battle beneath no Lord;

Strong blows, but on the void, and toil without

reward.

When from the waste of such long labour done

I too must leave the grape-ennobling sun

And like the vineyard worker take my way

Down the long shadows of declining day,

Bend on the sombre plain my clouded sight

And leave the mountain to the advancing night,

Come to the term of all that was mine own

With nothingness before me, and alone;

Then to what hope of answer shall I turn?

Comrade-Commander whom I dared not earn,

What said You then to trembling friends and

few?

"A moment, and I drink it with you new:

But in my Father's Kingdom." So, my Friend,

Let not Your cup desert me in the end.

But when the hour of mine adventure's near

Just and benignant, let my youth appear

Bearing a Chalice, open, golden, wide,

With benediction graven on its side.

So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep:

So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep,

And, sacramental, raise me the Divine:

Strong brother in God and last companion, Wine.