| BRING me wine, but wine which never grew | |
| In the belly of the grape, | |
| Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through | |
| Under the Andes to the Cape, | |
| Suffer'd no savour of the earth to 'scape. | 5 |
| |
| Let its grapes the morn salute | |
| From a nocturnal root, | |
| Which feels the acrid juice | |
| Of Styx and Erebus; | |
| And turns the woe of Night, | 10 |
| By its own craft, to a more rich delight. | |
| |
| We buy ashes for bread; | |
| We buy diluted wine; | |
| Give me of the true, | |
| Whose ample leaves and tendrils curl'd | 15 |
| Among the silver hills of heaven | |
| Draw everlasting dew; | |
| Wine of wine, | |
| Blood of the world, | |
| Form of forms, and mould of statures, | 20 |
| That I intoxicated, | |
| And by the draught assimilated, | |
| May float at pleasure through all natures; | |
| The bird-language rightly spell, | |
| And that which roses say so well: | 25 |
| |
| Wine that is shed | |
| Like the torrents of the sun | |
| Up the horizon walls, | |
| Or like the Atlantic streams, which run | |
| When the South Sea calls. | 30 |
| |
| Water and bread, | |
| Food which needs no transmuting, | |
| Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting, | |
| Wine which is already man, | |
| Food which teach and reason can. | 35 |
| |
| Wine which Music is,— | |
| Music and wine are one,— | |
| That I, drinking this, | |
| Shall hear far Chaos talk with me; | |
| Kings unborn shall walk with me; | 40 |
| And the poor grass shall plot and plan | |
| What it will do when it is man. | |
| Quicken'd so, will I unlock | |
| Every crypt of every rock. | |
| |
| I thank the joyful juice | 45 |
| For all I know; | |
| Winds of remembering | |
| Of the ancient being blow, | |
| And seeming-solid walls of use | |
| Open and flow. | 50 |
| |
| Pour, Bacchus! the remembering wine; | |
| Retrieve the loss of me and mine! | |
| Vine for vine be antidote, | |
| And the grape requite the lote! | |
| Haste to cure the old despair; | 55 |
| Reason in Nature's lotus drench'd— | |
| The memory of ages quench'd— | |
| Give them again to shine; | |
| Let wine repair what this undid; | |
| And where the infection slid, | 60 |
| A dazzling memory revive; | |
| Refresh the faded tints, | |
| Recut the agèd prints, | |
| And write my old adventures with the pen | |
| Which on the first day drew, | 65 |
| Upon the tablets blue, | |
| The dancing Pleiads and eternal men. | |
