A fig for a draught from your crystalline fountains,
Your cold sunken wells,
In mid forest dells,
Ha! bring me the fiery bright dew of the mountains,
When yellowed with peat-reek, and mellowed with age,
O, richest joy-giver!
Rare warmer of liver!
Diviner than kisses, thou droll and thou sage!
Fine soul of a land struck with brightest sun-tints,
Of dark purple moors,
Of sleek ocean-floors,
Of hills stained with heather like bloody footprints;
In sunshine, in rain, a flask shall be nigh me,
Warm heart, blood and brain, Fine Sprite deify me!
I've drunk 'mong slain deer in a lone mountain shieling,
I've drunk till delirious,
While rain beat imperious,
And rang roof and rafter with bagpipes and reeling.
I've drunk in Red Rannoch, amid its grey boulders:
Where, fain to be kist,
Through his thin scarf of mist,
Ben-More to the sun heaves his wet shining shoulders!
I've tumbled in hay with the fresh ruddy lasses,
I've drunk with the reapers,
I've roared with the keepers,
And scared night away with the ring of our glasses!
In sunshine, in rain, a flask shall be nigh me,
Warm heart, blood, and brain, Fine Sprite deify me!
Come, string bright songs upon a thread of wine,
And let the coming midnight pass through us,
Like a dusk prince crusted with gold and gems!
Our studious Edward from his Lincoln fens,
And home quaint-gabled hid in rooky trees,
Seen distant is the sun in the arch of noon,
Seen close at hand, the same sun large and red,
His day's work done, within the lazy west
Sitting right portly, staring at the world
With a round, rubicund, wine-bibbing face—
Ha! like a dove, I see a merry song
Pluming itself for flight upon his lips.
Edward sings.
My heart is beating with all things that are,
My blood is wild unrest;
With what a passion pants yon eager star
Upon the water's breast!
Clasped in the air's soft arms the world doth sleep,
Asleep its moving seas, its humming lands;
With what an hungry lip the ocean deep
Lappeth for ever the white-breasted sands;
What love is in the moon's eternal eyes,
Leaning unto the earth from out the midnight skies!
Thy large dark eyes are wide upon my brow,
Filled with as tender light
As yon low moon doth fill the heavens now,
This mellow autumn night!
On the late flowers I linger at thy feet,
I tremble when I touch thy garment's rim,
I clasp thy waist, I feel thy bosom's beat—
O kiss me into faintness sweet and dim!
Thou leanest to me as a swelling peach,
Full-juiced and mellow, leaneth to the taker's reach.
Thy hair is loosened by that kiss you gave,
It floods my shoulders o'er;
Another yet! Oh, as a weary wave
Subsides upon the shore,
My hungry being with its hopes, its fears,
My heart like moon-charmed waters, all unrest,
Yet strong as is despair, as weak as tears,
Doth faint upon thy breast!
I feel thy clasping arms, my cheek is wet
With thy rich tears. One kiss! Sweet, sweet, another yet!
I sang this song some twenty years ago,
(Hot to the ear-tips, with great thumps of heart),
On the gold lawn, while, Cæsar-like, the sun
Gathered his robes around him as he fell.
ARTHUR.
Struck by some country cousin, a rosy beauty
Of the Dutch-cheese order, riched with great black eyes,
Which, when you planned a theft upon her lips,
Looked your heart quite away!
Oh, Love! oh, Wine! thou sun and moon o' our lives,
What oysters were we without love and wine!
Our host, I doubt not, vaults a mighty tun,
Wide-wombed and old, cobwebbed and dusted o'er.
Broach! and within its gloomy sides you'll find
A beating heart of wine. The world's a tun,
A gloomy tun, but he who taps the world
Will find much sweetness in 't. Walter, my boy,
Against this sun of wine's most purple light
Burst into song.