A Lyric to Mirth

While the milder fates consent,
Let's enjoy our merriment :
Drink, and dance, and pipe, and play ;
Kiss our dollies night and day :
Crowned with clusters of the vine,
Let us sit, and quaff our wine.
Call on Bacchus, chant his praise ;
Shake the thyrse, and bite the bays :
Rouse Anacreon from the dead,
And return him drunk to bed :
Sing o'er Horace, for ere long
Death will come and mar the song :
Then shall Wilson and Gotiere
Never sing or play more here.

poem by Robert Herrick
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Youth In Memory

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead! -
Invoke them, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.

Behold the winged Olympus, off the mead,
With thunder of wide pinions, lightning speed,
Wafting the shepherd-boy through ether clear,
To bear the golden nectar-cup.
So flies desire at view of its delight,
When the young heart is tiptoe perched on sight.
We meanwhile who in hues of the sick year
The Spring-time paint to prick us for our lost,
Mount but the fatal half way up -
Whereon shut eyes! This is decreed,
For Age that would to youthful heavens ascend,

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poem by George Meredith
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Addiction To Travel

..and then there is a shark
that just gobbles up an old man
weird, then there is the whale that
is caught by the Japanese fishers

bloody shore, and then there is that
killing fields where skulls are like big white stones
horrible site, and then there is the temple
of Bacchus at Baalbek and then

the two stone dancers of Ankor Wat,
the moon set garden, Hongkong from
The Peak, and apples and Stilton and
pork-chops, and Manila Bay sunrise

travel makes us choose, from the eyes
to the tips of our toes, tongue and nose.

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
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To an Aged Cut-Up, II

Chloris lay off the flapper stuff;
What's fit for Pholoë, a fluff,
Is not for Ibycus's wife--
A woman at your time of life!

Ignore, old dame, such pleasures as
The shimmy and "the Bacchus Jazz";
Your presence with the maidens jars--
You are the cloud that dims the stars.

Your daughter Pholoë may stay
Out nights on the Appian Way;
her love for Nothus, as you know,
Makes her as playful as a doe.

No jazz for you, no jars of wine,
No rose that blooms incarnadine.
For one thing only you are fit:
Buy some Lucerian wool--and knit!

poem by Franklin P. Adams
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A Song. If Wine And Music Have The Power

If wine and music have the power
To ease the sickness of the soul,
Let Phoebis every string explore,
And Bacchus fill the sprightly bowl:
Let them their friendly aid employ
To make my Cloe's absense light,
And seek for pleasure to destroy
The sorrows of this live-long night.

But she to-morrow will return:
Venus, be thou to-morrow great;
Thy myrtles strow, thy odours burn,
And meet thy favourite nymph in state,
Kind goddess, to no other powers
Let us to-morrow's blessings own,
Thy darling Loves shall guide the hours,
And all the day be thine alone.

poem by Matthew Prior
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A Farewell To Tobacco

May the Babylonish curse
Straight confound my stammering verse,
If I can a passage see
In this word-perplexity,
Or a fit expression find,
Or a language to my mind,
(Still the phrase is wide or scant)
To take leave of thee, great plant!
Or in any terms relate
Half my love, or half my hate:
For I hate, yet love, thee so,
That, whichever thing I shew,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrain'd hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More from a mistress than a weed.

Sooty retainer to the vine,
Bacchus' black servant, negro fine;

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poem by Charles Lamb
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V.

Grant us succor both now and in time to
Come, through our Lord, Jesus Christ that blessed Son
Praise him with sonnet and haiku
Let by your true wisdom be done
The Lord has put down the mighty from their
Seat, he has brought then down to their bear knees,
That, they know that no evil shall be spared.
With this all true souls shall come to agree.
To thou O Lord have true mercy on us.
You are the light that light our way once dark.
Be us sober of thoughts, not a Bacchus
As Norah sober of thoughts toward the ark.
Keep true to the Lord’s service studying ever
Ever true of heart while never acting

poem by David E. Patton
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Tuscany

Cisterns and stones; the fig-tree in the wall
Casts down her shadow, ashen as her boughs,
Across the road, across the thick white dust.
Down from the hill the slow white oxen crawl,
Dragging the purple waggon heaped with must,
With scarlet tassels on their milky brows,
Gentle as evening moths. Beneath the yoke
Lounging against the shaft they fitful strain
To draw the waggon on its creaking spoke,
And all the vineyard folk
With staves and shouldered tools surround the wain.
The wooden shovels take the purple stain,
The dusk is heavy with the wine's warm load;
Here the long sense of classic measure cures
The spirit weary of its difficult pain;
Here the old Bacchic piety endures,
Here the sweet legends of the world remain.
Homeric waggons lumbering the road;
Virgilian litanies among the bine;
Pastoral sloth of flocks beneath the pine;

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poem by Victoria Sackville-West
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The Invocation Of Jealousy

The conquered world is bowed and worshipful,
And lovely Peace smooth-gowned in lightest grey
Cries, 'War is Dead' and treads upon it's skull.
While silken women walk their rosy way
Sneering at swords, and tittering at deeds,
And kicking relics with their pearl-shod feet,
Saying with mirth, 'The body never bleeds.
Old Mars is corpsed beneath great Bacchus'
seat.'
Young Mothers tell their babies of rusted spears
Of timid wolves, long fled to northern skies,
Of priests that sang of March in olden years,
And died in May with vain, despairing eyes,
The world is soothed with olive-juice and wine,
And spits upon the Quirinalian* shrine.

poem by Leon Gellert
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On a Wine of Horace's

What time I read your mighty line,
O Mr. Q. Horatius Flaccus,
In praise of many an ancient wine--
You twanged a wickid lyric to Bacchus!--
I wondered, like a Yankee hick,
If that old stuff contained a kick.

So when upon a Paris card
I glimpsed a Falernian, I said: "Waiter,
I'll emulate that ancient bard,
And pass upon his merits later."
Professor Mendell, quelque sport,
Suggested that we split a quart.

O Flaccus, ere I ceased to drink
Three glasses and a pair of highballs,
I could not talk, I could not think;
For I was pickled to the eyeballs.
If you sopped up Falernian wine
How did you ever write a line?

poem by Franklin P. Adams
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The Portent

Horace, BK. V. Ode 20.

Oh, late withdrawn from human-kind
And following dreams we never knew!
Varus, what dream has Fate assigned
To trouble you?

Such virtue as commends of law
Of Virtue to the vulgar horde
Suffices not. You needs must draw
A righteous sword;

And, flagrant in well-doing, smite
The priests of Bacchus at their fane,
Lest any worshipper invite
The God again.

Whence public strife and naked crime
And-deadlier than the cup you shun--

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poem by Rudyard Kipling
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To err is human ‘songstresses’.

She's a contralto,
With high sustaining, notes
Her voice is a salvo,
O’ the rapture, she emotes
Calling-on spicy, Bacchus...
In “lightness' or 'heaviness'.

She specializes in control.
Like a skylark, circling at
Dawn’s heartstring, cajole!
Her lips; heady, Muscat
Sing, their ritual, madness.
On this poor sap; Dionysus…

He fought with giant, titans
The dramatic is the deepest.
Florid passages filled heaven,
His tears wept there; shrillest.
She was like a priestess
Or better still a princess.

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poem by Mark Heathcote
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They Will Flee

Rhapsody of fallen twilight soul
We blaze the sculpted Grecian myth
Roman states decayed into barbarism
Pay the price of the pleasure gods
Bacchus wild with sensuous fever
Saturn swirls with fallen angels

What’s in your closet?
The door opens by itself
We are not alone and they are cold
They are dead

Why do the stars shine so true?
She wears a golden lions head
Fierce like a mad gargoyle
Why are you afraid of the dark?
What’s in your room?

Children of the decadent hour laugh
They run with wolves

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poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Life's Hebe

IN the early morning-shine
Of a certain day divine,
I beheld a Maiden stand
With a pitcher in her hand;
Whence she poured into a cup
Until it was half filled up
Nectar that was golden light
In the cup of crystal bright.

And the first who took the cup
With pure water filled it up;
As he drank then, it was more
Ruddy golden than before:
And he leapt and danced and sang
As to Bacchic cymbals’ clang.

But the next who took the cup
With the red wine filled it up;
What he drank then was in hue
Of a heavy sombre blue:

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poem by James Thomson
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Needful Awakening

Long and hard
The bantering
Shook my eardrums
Drunken revelery
Had clamoured
Endlessly
A Celebration
Of Bacchus
Could cause
No worse
Debauchery
Lewd and
Lasvascious
Spouting out
Carnal inferences
Bent a little too
Far to the left
Leaning on
The near side
Of perversion

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poem by Theodora Onken
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Freedom's Myth

Will Bacchus' wine drown me at last
In drunken stupor lie?
Freed from the memories of the past,
In deepest slumber sigh?

To soar in dreams Orion's mantle
Ride Hermes' wings in fantasy
To heights and stars all mine to handle
Here lies my bed, this galaxy.

Will Eros then in mercy take
His cruel arrow from my heart?
From Aphrodite's list forsake
My name, from love do I depart!

Escape to blissful freedom here
In bright Aurora sun
The dawn shall wipe away the tear
Of night, for new day has began.

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poem by Cynthia Buhain-Baello
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Poem 14

NOw al is done; bring home the bride againe,
bring home the triumph of our victory,
Bring home with you the glory of her gaine,
With ioyance bring her and with iollity.
Neuer had man more ioyfull day then this,
Whom heauen would heape with blis.
Make feast therefore now all this liue long day,
This day for euer to me holy is,
Poure out the wine without restraint or stay,
Poure not by cups, but by the belly full,
Poure out to all that wull,
And sprinkle all the postes and wals with wine,
That they may sweat, and drunken be withall.
Crowne ye God Bacchus with a coronall,
And Hymen also crowne with wreathes of vine,
And let the Graces daunce vnto the rest;
For they can doo it best:
The whiles the maydens doe theyr carroll sing,
To which the woods shal answer & theyr eccho ring.

poem by Edmund Spenser
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To Quintus Hirpinus

To Scythian and Cantabrian plots,
Pay them no heed, O Quintius!
So long as we
From care are free,
Vexations cannot cinch us.

Unwrinkled youth and grace, forsooth,
Speed hand in hand together;
The songs we sing
In time of spring
Are hushed in wintry weather.

Why, even flow'rs change with the hours,
And the moon has divers phases;
And shall the mind
Be racked to find
A clew to Fortune's mazes?

Nay; 'neath this tree let you and me
Woo Bacchus to caress us;

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poem by Eugene Field
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Cosmic Unity

Strictly
non-interventionist.
Individual contributions
species coordinated.
Man quarantine manacled alone
only earthbound bondage observation.

Infringement revocation
of terrestrial orders
never extramundane compromise.
No being licenced
lands lawfully disrupts
web of quarantine cultures.

Comprehension conservation deepens.
Grasp disunity observed
waste weakens weaning
planetary biospheres.
Competitive covetous natures
strip sustainable resources.

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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Ode For Walt Whitman

A Translation for Steve Jonas

Along East River and the Bronx
The kids were singing, showing off their bodies
At the wheel, at oil, the rawhide, and the hammer.
Ninety thousand miners were drawing silver out of boulders
While children made perspective drawings of stairways.

But no one went to sleep
No one wanted to be a river
No one loved the big leaves, no one
The blue tongue of the coastline.

Along East River into Queens
The kids were wrestling with industry.
The Jews sold circumcision’s rose
To the faun of the river.
The sky flowed through the bridges and rooftops—
Herds of buffalo the wind was pushing.

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poem by Jack Spicer
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