When one cup in fell confusion
Wine with water blends, the fusion,
Call it by what name you will,
Is no blessing, nor deserveth
Any praise, but rather serveth
For the emblem of all ill.
Wine perceives the water present,
And with pain exclaims, "What peasant
Dared to mingle thee with me?
Rise, go forth, get out, and leave me!
In the same place, here to grieve me,
Thou hast no just claim to be.
"Vile and shameless in thy going,
Into cracks thou still art flowing,
That in foul holes thou mayst lie;
O'er the earth thou ought'st to wander,
On the earth thy liquor squander,
And at length in anguish die.
"How canst thou adorn a table?
No one sings or tells a fable
In thy presence dull and drear;
But the guest who erst was jolly,
Laughing, joking, bent on folly,
Silent sits when thou art near.
"Should one drink of thee to fulness,
Sound before, he takes an illness;
All his bowels thou dost stir;
Booms the belly, wind ariseth,
Which, enclosed and pent, surpriseth
With a thousand sighs the ear.
"When the stomach's so inflated,
Blasts are then ejaculated
From both draughts with divers sound;
And that organ thus affected,
All the air is soon infected
By the poison breathed around."
Water thus wine's home-thrust warded:
"All thy life is foul and sordid,
Sunk in misery, steeped in vice;
Those who drink thee lose their morals,
Waste their time in sloth and quarrels,
Rolling down sin's precipice.
"Thou dost teach man's tongue to stutter;
He goes reeling in the gutter
Who hath deigned to kiss thy lips;
Hears men speak without discerning,
Sees a hundred tapers burning
When there are but two poor dips.
"He who feels for thee soul's hunger
Is a murderer or whoremonger,
Davus Geta Birria;
Such are they whom thou dost nourish;
With thy fame and name they flourish
In the tavern's disarray.
"Thou by reason of thy badness
Art confined in prison sadness,
Cramped and small thy dwellings are:
I am great the whole world over,
Spread myself abroad and cover
Every part of earth afar.