To exalt, enthrone, establish and defend,
To welcome home mankind's mysterious
Wine, true begetter of all arts that be;
Wine, privilege of the completely free;
Wine the recorder; wine the sagely strong;
Wine, bright avenger of sly-dealing wrong,
Awake,
Ausonian Muse, and sing the vineyard song!
Sing how the Charioteer from Asia came,
And on his front the little dancing
Which marked the God-head.
Sing the Panther-team,
The gilded Thrysus twirling, and the
Of cymbals through the darkness.
Sing the drums.
He comes; the young renewer of Hellas comes!
The Seas await him.
Those Aegean
Roll from the dawning, ponderous, ill at ease,
In lifts of lead, whose cresting hardly
To ghostly foam, when suddenly there awakesA mountain glory inland.
All the
Are luminous; and amid the sea bird
The mariner hears a morning breeze arise.
Then goes the Pageant forward.
The
Silvers the feet of that august
Trailing above the waters, through the airs;
And as they pass a wind before them
The quickening word, the influence magical.
The Islands have received it, marble-tall;
The long shores of the mainland.
Something
The warm Euboean combes, the sacred
Of Aulis and of Argos.
Still they
Touching the City walls, the Temple grove,
Till, far upon the horizon-glint, a
Of light, of trembling light, revealed they
Turned to a cloud, but to a cloud that shines,
And everywhere as they pass, the Vines!
The Vines!
The Vines, the conquering Vines!
And the
Her savour through the upland, empty
Of treeless wastes; the Vines have come to
The dark Pelasgian steep defends the
Of the wolf's hiding; to the empty
By Aufidus, the dry campaign that
No harvest for the husbandman, but
Shall bear a nobler foison than the plough;
To where, festooned along the tall elm trees,
Tendrils are mirrored in Tyrrhenian seas;
To where the South awaits them; even to
Stark,
African informed of burning air,
Upturned to Heaven the broad Hipponian
Extends luxurious and invites the main.
Guelma's a mother: barren Thaspsa breeds;
And northward in the valleys, next the
That sleep by misty river banks, the
Have struck to spread below the solemn pines.
The Vines are on the roof-trees.
All the
And Homes of men are consecrate with Vines.
And now the task of that triumphant
Has reached to victory.
In the reddening
With all his train, from hard Iberian
Fulfilled, apparent, that Creator
Halted on Atlas.
Far Beneath him, far,
The strength of Ocean darkening and the
Beyond all shores.
There is a silence made.
It glorifies: and the gigantic
Of Hercules adores him from the West.
Dead Lucre: burnt Ambition:
Wine is best.
But what are these that from the outer
Of dense mephitic vapours creeping
To breathe foul airs from that corrupted
Which oozes slime along the floor of Hell?
These are the stricken palsied brood of
In whose vile veins, poor, poisonous and thin,
Decoctions of embittered hatreds crawl:
These are the Water-Drinkers, cursed all!
On what gin-sodden Hags, what flaccid
Bred these White Slugs from what exhaust desires?
In what close prison's horror were their
Watched by what tyrant power with evil smiles;
Or in what caverns, blocked from grace and
Received they, then, the mandates of despair?
What!
Must our race, our tragic race, that
All exiled from our first, and final, home:
That in one moment of temptation
Our heritage, and now wander,
Beyond the Gates (still speaking with our
For ever of remembered Paradise),
Must we with every gift accepted, still,
With every joy, receive attendant ill?
Must some lewd evil follow all our
And muttering dog our brief beatitude?
A primal doom, inexorable, wise,
Permitted, ordered, even these to rise.
Even in the shadow of so bright a
Must swarm and propagate the filthy
Debased, accursed I say, abhorrent and abhorred.
Accursed and curse-bestowing.
For
Shall suffer their contagion,
Falls from the estate of man and finds his
To the mere beverage of the beast condemned.
For such as these in vain the Rhine has
Imperial centuries by hills of gold;
For such as these the flashing Rhone shall
In vain its lightning through the
Or level-browed divine Touraine
The tribute of her vintages at eve.
For such as these Burgundian heats in
Swell the rich slope or load the empurpled plain.
Bootless for such as these the mighty
Of bottling God the Father in a
And leading all Creation down
To one small ardent sphere immensely filled.
With memories empty, with experience null,
With vapid eye-balls meaningless and
They pass unblest through the unfruitful light;
And when we open the bronze doors of Night,
When we in high carousal, we reclined,
Spur up to Heaven the still ascending mind,
Pass with the all inspiring, to and fro,
The torch of genius and the Muse's glow,
They, lifeless, stare at vacancy
Or plan mean traffic, or repeat their moan.
We, when repose demands us, welcomed
In young white arms, like our great
Who, wearied with creation, takes his
And sinks to sleep on Ariadne's breast.
They through the darkness into darkness
Despised, abandoned and companionless.
And when the course of either's sleep has
We leap to life like heralds of the sun;
We from the couch in roseate mornings
Salute as equals the exultant
While they, the unworthy, unrewarded,
The dank despisers of the Vine,
To watch grey dawns and mourn indifferent skies.
Forget them!
Form the Dionysian
And pulse the ground, and Io,
Io, sing.
Father Lenaean, to whom our strength belongs,
Our loves, our wars, our laughter and our songs,
Remember our inheritance, who
Your glory in these last unhappy
When beauty sickens and a muddied
Of baseness fouls the universal globe.
Though all the Gods indignant and their
Abandon ruined man, do thou remain!
By thee the vesture of our life was made,
The Embattled Gate, the lordly Colonnade,
The woven fabric's gracious hues, the
Of trumpets, and the quivering fountain-round,
And, indestructible, the Arch, and, high,
The Shaft of Stone that stands against the sky,
And, last, the guardian-genius of them,
Rhyme,
Come from beyond the world to conquer time:
All these are thine,
Lenaean.
By thee do seers the inward light discern;
By thee the statue lives, the Gods return;
By thee the thunder and the falling
Of loud Acquoria's torrent call to Rome;
Alba rejoices in a thousand springs,
Gensano laughs, and Orvieto sings…But,
Ah!
With Orvieto, with that
Of dark,
Eturian, subterranean
The years dissolve.
I am standing in that
Of majesty Septembral, and the
Which swells the clusters when the nights are
With autumn stars on Orvieto hill.
Had these been mine,
Ausonian Muse, to
The large contented oxen heaving slow;
To count my sheaves at harvest; so to
Perfected days in peace until the end;
With every evening's dust of gold to
The bells upon the pasture height, the
Full horn of herdsmen gathering in the
To ancient byres in hamlets Appenine,
And crown abundant age with generous ease:
Had these,
Ausonian Muse, had these, had these…..
But since I would not, since I could not stay,
Let me remember even in this my
How, when the ephemeral vision's lure is
All, all, must face their Passion at the
Was there not one that did to Heaven
How, driving through the midnight and the rain,
He struck, the Atlantic seethe and surge before,
Wrecked in the North along a lonely
To make the lights of home and hear his name nomore.
Was there not one that from a desperate
Rode with no guerdon but a rifted shield;
A name disherited; a broken sword;
Wounds unrenowned; battle beneath no Lord;
Strong blows, but on the void, and toil withoutreward.
When from the waste of such long labour doneI too must leave the grape-ennobling
And like the vineyard worker take my
Down the long shadows of declining day,
Bend on the sombre plain my clouded
And leave the mountain to the advancing night,
Come to the term of all that was mine
With nothingness before me, and alone;
Then to what hope of answer shall I turn?
Comrade-Commander whom I dared not earn,
What said You then to trembling friends andfew?"A moment, and I drink it with you new:
But in my Father's Kingdom." So, my Friend,
Let not Your cup desert me in the end.
But when the hour of mine adventure's
Just and benignant, let my youth
Bearing a Chalice, open, golden, wide,
With benediction graven on its side.
So touch my dying lip: so bridge that deep:
So pledge my waking from the gift of sleep,
And, sacramental, raise me the Divine:
Strong brother in God and last companion,
Wine.
