THE Paradise they bid us fast to win
Hath Wine and Women; is it then a sin
To live as we shall live in Paradise,
And make a Heaven of Earth, ere Heaven begin?
The wise may search the world from end to end,
From dusty nook to dusty nook, my friend,
And nothing better find than girls and wine,
Of all the things they neither make nor mend.
Nay, listen thou who, walking on Life’s way,
Hast seen no lovelock of thy love’s grow grey
Listen, and love thy life, and let the Wheel
Of Heaven go spinning its own wilful way.
Man is a flagon, and his soul the wine,
Man is a lamp, wherein the Soul doth shine,
Man is a shaken reed, wherein that wind,
The Soul, doth ever rustle and repine.
Each morn I say, to-night I will repent,
Repent! and each night go the way I went—
The way of Wine; but now that reigns the rose,
Lord of Repentance, rage not, but relent.
I wish to drink of wine—so deep, so deep—
The scent of wine my sepulchre shall steep,
And they, the revellers by Omar’s tomb,
Shall breathe it, and in Wine shall fall asleep.
Before the rent walls of a ruined town
Lay the King’s skull, whereby a bird flew down
‘And where,’ he sang, ‘is all thy clash of arms?
Where the sonorous trumps of thy renown?’