BACCHUS
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ring me wine, but wine which never grewIn the belly of the grape,Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through,Under the Andes to the Cape,Suffer no savor of the earth to scape. Let its grapes the morn saluteFrom a nocturnal root,Which feels the acrid juiceOf Styx and Erebus;And turns the woe of Night,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 curledAmong the silver hills of heavenDraw everlasting dew;Wine of wine,Blood of the world,Form of forms, and mould of statures,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. Wine that is shedLike the torrents of the sunUp the horizon walls,Or like the Atlantic streams, which runWhen the South Sea calls. Water and bread,Food which needs no transmuting,Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting,Wine which is already man,Food which teach and reason can. 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;And the poor grass shall plot and planWhat it will do when it is man.Quickened so, will I unlockEvery crypt of every rock. I thank the joyful juiceFor all I know;--Winds of rememberingOf the ancient being blow,And seeming-solid walls of useOpen and flow. 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,--Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,The memory of ages quenched;Give them again to shine;Let wine repair what this undid;And where the infection slid,A dazzling memory revive;Refresh the faded tints,Recut the aged prints,And write my old adventures with the penWhich on the first day drew,Upon the tablets blue,The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.
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