AD PUERUM.
Boy, that at my drinking-bout
Servest old Falernian out,
Fill me faster cups, and quicker,
With the spirit-stirring liquor.
So Posthumia's law doth say,—
Mistress of the feast to-day;
She more vinous than the grape.
Springs of water—bane of wine—
Where ye please for me and mine,
Avaunt, begone, escape!
Emigrate to men demure.
My bumper is Thyonian pure.
Gratian.—I am afraid, Curate, that if you were to take what you please to call "the cheering glass," such as the jade Posthumia would recommend, we should have to put you to bed pretty early. It was the custom, it should seem, of the ancients to make a throw of the dice to determine the arbiter of the feast—to appoint the drinking. Who threw Venus (three sixes) was the magister; but the magistra is a novelty; a "Venus Ebria," whose drinking law would throw all; for "wine is a wrestler, and a shrewd one too." Doesn't Shakspeare say so? Now for your version, Aquilius.
Aquilius.—Curate will say, I am not so close to the original. But, on such a subject, we may be allowed to walk not quite straight;—a little zig-zaggy. Spite the coming criticism I venture:—
AD PUERUM SUUM,
(To his Wine-server.)
Pour me out, boy, the generous juice.
The racy, true, the old Falernus;
Such wines as, to Posthumia's thinking,
Are only fit for mortals' use;
When in her glory, drunk, and winking,
The dame would quaff, and wisely learn us
The good old simple law of drinking.
But water shun;—Hence, waters! go,
E'en as ye will, to chill Avernus,
Or whereso'er ye please to flow;—
Be drink for all the dull, the slow,
The sad, the serious, the phlegmatic;
But leave this juice, this pure stomachic,
Its own, its unadulterate glow;—
This—this alone is genuine Bacchic!
Gratian.—Well, then, that must be our parting cup for the night, and a pretty good "night-cap" it is. I was afraid, Aquilius, when you came to the "phlegmatic" you would rhyme it to "rheumatic," and so on to the "water-cure." You know that is recommended in rheumatic cases; but perhaps you don't know that I tried it. I had the water-drinking, the wet sheets, and all the rest of it.
Aquilius.—And are here to tell of it!