The joys of wine, immortal as my theme,
To days of mirth the aspiring soul invite:
Life, void of this, a punishment I deem,
A Greenland winter, robbed of heat and light.
Ah! envy not, ye sages too precise,
The drop from life's gay tree, that kills our woe—
Noah himself, the wary and the wise,
A vineyard planted—and the vines did grow.
(Of social soul was he)—the grape he pressed,
And drank the juice, oblivious to his care:
Sorrow he banished from his place of rest,
And sighs, and sextons, had no business there.
Such bliss be our's through every changing scene:
The jovial face bespeaks the glowing heart;
If heaven be joy, wine is to heaven a-kin,
Since wine, on earth, can heavenly joys impart.
Mere glow-worms are we all—a moment shine!—
I, like the rest, in giddy circles run,
And grief shall say, when I this breath resign,
His glass is empty, and his sermon done!
[88] Unique, as far as I can discover, in the edition of 1795.
[89] Freneau seems deliberately to have manufactured this poem for his edition of 1795 from fragments of his discarded poems, the House of Night and the Jamaica Funeral. It is made up as follows: Jamaica Funeral, stanzas 44-46; House of Night 73, 132-134, 139; Jamaica Funeral 47; House of Night 76, 77; an original stanza; House of Night 48, 34, 116, 30, 43; Jamaica Funeral 34, 35, 40, 48-51. Many of these stanzas are much changed. Text from the 1809 edition.