Bacchus

BRING me wine but wine which never grew 
In the belly of the grape  
Or grew on vine whose tap-roots reaching through 
Under the Andes to the Cape  
Suffer'd no savour of the earth to 'scape.
 5 

Let its grapes the morn salute 
From a nocturnal root  
Which feels the acrid juice 
Of Styx and Erebus; 
And turns the woe of Night 10 
By its own craft to a more rich delight.
 

We buy ashes for bread; 
We buy diluted wine; 
Give me of the true  
Whose ample leaves and tendrils curl'd 15 
Among the silver hills of heaven 
Draw everlasting dew; 
Wine of wine  
Blood of the world  
Form of forms and mould of statures 20 
That I intoxicated  
And by the draught assimilated  
May float at pleasure through all natures; 
The bird-language rightly spell  
And that which roses say so well: 25 

Wine that is shed 
Like the torrents of the sun 
Up the horizon walls  
Or like the Atlantic streams which run 
When the South Sea calls.
 30 

Water and bread  
Food which needs no transmuting  
Rainbow-flowering wisdom-fruiting  
Wine which is already man  
Food which teach and reason can.
 35 

Wine which Music is ¡ª 
Music and wine are one ¡ª 
That I drinking this  
Shall hear far Chaos talk with me; 
Kings unborn shall walk with me; 40 
And the poor grass shall plot and plan 
What it will do when it is man.
 
Quicken'd so will I unlock 
Every crypt of every rock.
 

I thank the joyful juice 45 
For all I know; 
Winds of remembering 
Of the ancient being blow  
And seeming-solid walls of use 
Open and flow.
 50 

Pour Bacchus! the remembering wine; 
Retrieve the loss of me and mine! 
Vine for vine be antidote  
And the grape requite the lote! 
Haste to cure the old despair; 55 
Reason in Nature's lotus drench'd¡ª 
The memory of ages quench'd¡ª 
Give them again to shine; 
Let wine repair what this undid; 
And where the infection slid 60 
A dazzling memory revive; 
Refresh the faded tints  
Recut the ag¨¨d prints  
And write my old adventures with the pen 
Which on the first day drew 65 
Upon the tablets blue  
The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.
 

Biography | Poems | Best Poems | Short Poems | Quotes | Email Poem |

Poems are below...