PREACH not me your musty rules,
Ye drones that mould in idle cell
The heart is wiser than the schools,
The senses always reason well.
If short my span, I less can spare
To pass a single pleasure by;
An hour is long if lost in care;
They only live who life enjoy *.
* This and the following short piece are taken from the writer's alteration of Comus, by which he has certainly given more force to the voluptuous doctrine than Milton would have approved, yet has displayed a fine taste and uncommon talents for compositions of this kind.
By the gaily-circling glass
We can see how minutes pass;
By the hollow cask we 're told
How the waning night grows old.
Soon, too soon, the busy day
Drives us from our sport and play.
What have we with day to do?
Sons of care! 't was made for you.
BUSY, curious, thirsty Fly!
Drink with me, and drink as I;
Freely welcome to my cup,
Couldst thou sip and sip it up.
Make the most of life you may,
Life is short, and wears away.
Both alike are mine and thine
Hastening quick to their decline
Thine's a summer-mine no more,
Though repeated to threescore;
Threescore summers, when they're gone,
Will appear as short as one. *
WHEN I drain the rosy bowl
Joy exhilarates my soul;
To the Nine I raise my song,
Ever fair and ever young.
When full cups my cares expell,
Sober counsels, then farewell;
Let the winds that murmur sweep
All my sorrows to the deep.
When I drink dull time away,
Jolly Bacchus, ever gay,
* Of the pieces termed Anacreontic, this is one of the most pleasing, on account of the ease and good-humoured familiarity of the diction, and the happy turn of the sen
Leads me to delightful bowers, al
Full of fragrance, full of flowers
When I quaff the sparkling wine,
And 1 my locks with roses twine, g
Then I praise life's rural scene,
Sweet, sequester'd, and serene.
When I sink the bowl profound,
Richest fragrance flowing round,
And some lovely nymph detain,
Venus then inspires the strain.
When from goblets deep and wide
I exhaust the generous tide,...
All my soul unbends: I play,
Gamesome with the young and gay.
THE thirsty earth drinks up the rain,
And thirsts, and gapes for drink again ;
The plants suck in the earth, and are
With constant drinking fresh and fair.
* This song is written in the person of Anacreon, the form of one of whose odes it copies, and whose general strain of sentiment it imitates.
The sea itself (which one would think
Should have but little need of drink)
Drinks twice ten thousand rivers up,
So fill'd that they o'erflow the cup.
The busy sun (and one would
guess By's drunken fiery face no less)
Drinks up the sea, and when he' as done,
The moon and stars drink up the sun.
They drink and dance by their own light,
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 here; for why
Should every creature drink but I?
Why, man of morals, tell me why!*
Freely translated from Anacreon.
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