They drink and revel all the night.
Nothing in nature’s sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.
Fill up the bowl then, fill it high,
Fill all the glasses there; for why
Should every creature drink but I;
Why, man of morals, tell me why?’
This is a classical intoxication; and the poet’s imagination, giddy with fancied joys, communicates its spirit and its motion to inanimate things, and makes all nature reel round with it. It is not easy to decide between these choice pieces, which may be reckoned among the delights of human kind; but that to the Grasshopper is one of the happiest as well as most serious:—
‘Happy insect, what can be
In happiness compar’d to thee?