Juvenile poems on various subjects :: :: University of Virginia Library

Come! let Mirth our hours employ,
The jolly God inspires;
The rosy juice our bosom fires,
And tunes our souls to joy.
See, great Bacchus now descending,
Gay, with blushing honours crown'd;
Sprightly Mirth and Love attending,
Around him wait,
In smiling state—
Let Echo resound,
Let Echo resound
The joyful news all around.

II.

Fond Mortals come, if love perplex,
In Wine relief you'll find;
Who 'd whine for womens giddy sex
More fickle than the wind?
If beauty's bloom thy fancy warms,
Here, see her shine,
Cloath'd in superior charms;
More lovely than the blushing morn,
When first the op'ning day
Bedecks the thorn,
And makes the meadows gay.
Here see her in her crystal shrine;
See and adore; confess her all divine,
The Queen of Love and Joy.
Heed not thy Chloe's scorn—
This sparkling glass,
With winning grace,
Shall ever meet thy fond embrace,
And never, never, never cloy,
No never, never cloy.

III.

Here, Poet! see, Castalia's spring—
Come, give me a bumper, I'll mount to the skies,
Another, another—'Tis done! I arise;
On fancy's wing,
I mount, I sing.
And now, sublime,

Parnassus' lofty top I climb—
But hark! what sounds are these I hear,
Soft as the dream of her in love,
Or Zephyr's whisp'ring thro' the Grove?
And now, more solemn far than fun'ral woe,
The heavy numbers flow!
And now again,
The varied strain,
Grown louder and bolder, strikes quick on the ear,
And thrills thro' ev'ry vein.

IV.

'Tis Pindar's song!
His softer notes the fanning gales
Waft across the spicy vales,
While, thro' the air,
Loud whirlwinds bear
The harsher notes along.
Inspir'd by Wine,
He leaves the lazy croud below,
Who never dar'd to peep abroad,
And, mounting to his native sky,
For ever there shall shine.
No more I'll plod
The beaten road;
Like him inspir'd, like him I'll mount on high;
Like his my strain shall flow.

V.

Haste, ye Mortals! leave your sorrow;
Let pleasure crown to day—to morrow
Yield to fate.
Join the universal chorus,
Bacchus reigns,
Ever great;
Bacchus reigns
Ever glorious—
Hark! the joyful groves rebound,
Sporting breezes catch the sound,
And tell to hill and dale around—
“Bacchus reigns”—
While far away,
The busy Echoes die away.—

The Dithyrambic demands a greater boldness than any other poetical composition, and is indeed the only one in which a lyric irregularity may be happily indulged.

Francis's Horace.

As our Poet appears so warm on his subject, it may not be amiss to remark here, that he never drank any Wine, and that his bumpers are all ideal, which may serve, perhaps, as a refutation of that noted adage, that a water drinker can never be a good Dithyrambic Poet.