now
I bring full-flavoured wine out of a barrel found
Where seven Ephesian topers slept and never knew
When Alexander's empire passed, they slept so sound.
even
The bed of love, that in the imagination
Had seemed to be the giver of all peace,
Is no more than a wine-cup in the tasting,
And as soon finished.
BIRTH, n. The first and direst of all disasters. As to the nature of it there appears to be no uniformity. Castor and Pollux were born from the egg. Pallas came out of a skull. Galatea was once a block of stone. Peresilis, who wrote in the tenth century, avers that he grew up out of the ground where a priest had spilled holy water. It is known that Arimaxus was derived from a hole in the earth, made by a stroke of lightning. Leucomedon was the son of a cavern in Mount Etna, and I have myself seen a man come out of a wine cellar.
It is with artworks as it is with wine: it is much better when we do not need either one, when we stick with water, and when out of our own inner fire, the inner sweetness of our own soul, we turn the water over and over again into wine ourselves.
She wants to drink that man too, and then she can forget forever the cheap wine that you gulp down and that makes you feel drunk, but always leaves you with a headache and an empty space in your soul.
And now it goes as it goes and where it ends is Fate. And neither by singeing flesh nor tipping cups of wine nor shedding burning tears can you enchant away the rigid Fury.
I had been hungry all the years- My noon had come, to dine- I, trembling, drew the table near And touched the curious wine. 'Twas this on tables I had seen When turning, hungry, lone, I looked in windows, for the wealth I could not hope to own. I did not know the ample bread, 'Twas so unlike the crumb The birds and I had often shared In Nature's diningroom. The plenty hurt me, 'twas so new,-- Myself felt ill and odd, As berry of a mountain bush Transplanted to the road. Nor was I hungry; so I found That hunger was a way Of persons outside windows, The entering takes away.