 | The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith |  |
Ho! a flask of old wine, grey with cobwebs, whose scent
Made the grim spiders jolly in bloated content.
Rare topers! no fly buzzed their darkness, or brought
The grossness of appetite into their thought;
Nor bubble nor bead marred the rapture divine,
But they netted aroma, and breathed the bright wine,
And folding the cork in their mouse-coloured wraps,
They boozed on, and dreamt not of time and its lapse.
And oh for my Horace's Daphne or Phyllis,
Low-browed, and breathing of wreathed amaryllis;
How her eyes beam, and her golden curls break,
Like tangled laburnum drops, round her white neck!—
Shell-tipped her fingers are, taper and long,
Tripping she comes to me, lissom and strong,
Yet coy too, and hard to be caught, till I kiss
The blushes and dimples, and revel in bliss.
Made the grim spiders jolly in bloated content.
Rare topers! no fly buzzed their darkness, or brought
The grossness of appetite into their thought;
Nor bubble nor bead marred the rapture divine,
But they netted aroma, and breathed the bright wine,
And folding the cork in their mouse-coloured wraps,
They boozed on, and dreamt not of time and its lapse.
And oh for my Horace's Daphne or Phyllis,
Low-browed, and breathing of wreathed amaryllis;
How her eyes beam, and her golden curls break,
Like tangled laburnum drops, round her white neck!—
Shell-tipped her fingers are, taper and long,
Tripping she comes to me, lissom and strong,
Yet coy too, and hard to be caught, till I kiss
The blushes and dimples, and revel in bliss.
| The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith | |