One day, as Bacchus wandered out
From his own gay and glorious heaven,
To see what mortals were about
Below, ’twixt six o’clock and seven,
And laugh at all the toils and tears,
The sudden hopes, the causeless fears,
The midnight songs, the morning smarts,
The aching heads, the breaking hearts,
Which he and his fair crony Venus
Within the month had sown between us,
He lighted by chance on a fiddling fellow
Who never was known to be less than mellow,
A wandering poet, who thought it his duty
To feed upon nothing but bowls and beauty,
Who worshipped a rhyme, and detested a quarrel,
And cared not a single straw for laurel,
Holding that grief was sobriety’s daughter,
And loathing critics, and cold water.
Ere day on the Gog-Magog hills had fainted,
The god and the minstrel were quite acquainted;
Beneath a tree, in the sunny weather,
They sate them down, and drank together:
They drank of all fluids that ever were poured
By an English lout, or a German lord,
Rum and shrub, and brandy and gin,
One after another, they stowed them in,
Claret of Carbonell, porter of Meux,
Champagne which would waken a wit in dukes,
Humble Port, and proud Tokay,
Persico, and Crême de Thé,
The blundering Irishman’s Usquebaugh,
The fiery Welshman’s Cwrw da;
And after toasting various names
Of mortal and immortal flames,
And whispering more than I or you know
Of Mistress Poll, and Mistress Juno,
The god departed, scarcely knowing
A Zephyr’s from a nose’s blowing,
A frigate from a pewter flagon,
Or Thespis from his own stage waggon;
And rolling about like a barrel of grog,
He went up to heaven as drunk as a hog!
“Now may I,” he lisped, “for ever sit
In Lethe’s darkest and deepest pit,
Where dulness everlasting reigns
O’er the quiet pulse and the drowsy brains,
Where ladies jest, and lovers laugh,
And noble lords are bound in calf,
And Zoilus for his sins rehearses
Old Bentham’s prose, old Wordsworth’s verses,
If I have not found a richer draught
Than ever yet Olympus quaffed
Better and brighter and dearer far
Than the golden sands of Pactolus are!”
And then he filled in triumph up,
To the highest top sparkle, Jove’s beaming cup,
And pulling up his silver hose,
And turning in his tottering toes
(While Hebe, as usual, the mischievous gipsy,
Was laughing to see her brother tipsy),
He said—“May it please your high Divinity,
This nectar is—Milk Punch at Trinity!”