It's—'Reins to the blood!' and 'Marry!'—
The season's a prince who burns
With the teasing lusts that harry
His heart for a wench who spurns.
It's—'Crown us a beaker with sherry,
To drink to the doxy's heels;
A tankard of wine o' the berry,
To lips like a cloven peel's.
''S death! if a king be saddened,
Right so let a fool laugh lies:
But wine! when a king is gladdened,
And a woman's waist and her eyes.'
He hath shattered the loom of the weaver,
And left but a leaf that flits,
He hath seized heaven's gold, and a fever
Of mist and of frost is its.
He hath tippled the buxom beauty,
And gotten her hug and her kiss—
The wide world's royal booty
To pile at her feet for this.
ALONG THE OHIO
Athwart a sky of brass long welts of gold;
A path of gold the wide Ohio lies;
Beneath the sunset, billowing manifold,
The dark-blue hilltops rise.
And westward dips the crescent of the moon
Through great cloud-feathers, flushed with rosy ray,
That close around the crystal of her lune
The redbird wings of Day.
A little skiff slips o'er the burnished stream;
A fiery wake, that broadens far behind,
Follows in ripples; and the paddles gleam
Against the evening wind.
Was it the boat, the solitude and hush,
That with dead Indians peopled all the glooms?
That made each bank, meseemed, and every bush
Start into eagle-plumes?