Venerino's Drinking Song
I sailed the seas and took my ease
and spent my share of silver:
embraced the breeze and drank the lees,
from Malta to Manilva.
Audaciously I might opine
that silver has no worth:
for feckless metal cannot shine
when buried in the earth.
A drunkard’s words are juvenile,
a hymn to heathen Horus:
what’s past’s too vast to reconcile:
our chorus lies before us.
You’d use a knife to cut a knot?
You’ll also need a whetter.
so slip some humour in the slot:
you’ll find it slices better!
Though sprinkled daisies may disarm
as well as mighty cedars,
the humble poet yet may charm
his few discerning readers.
I’m glad I’m poorer than a monk,
and not a millionaire:
no hemlock brew was ever drunk
from cups of earthenware.
They all go off to college, where,
like countless grains of rice,
they think to get some knowledge there,
yet bridle at the price.
“Why sing with irony?”, you ask:
see where mankind has got to!
I deem it, when I mull my task,
beyond my powers not to!
I find no lack of living-room
beneath the spreading sky:
the best of me escapes the tomb:
I shall not wholly die.
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