Great is the art,

Great be the manners, of the bard.
He shall not his brain encumber
With the coil of rhythm and number;
But, leaving rule and pale forethought,
He shall aye climb

For his rhyme.

'Pass in, pass in,' the angels say, In to the upper doors,

Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise

By the stairway of surprise.'

Blameless master of the games,
King of sport that never shames,
He shall daily joy dispense
Hid in song's sweet influence.
Things more cheerly live and go,
What time the subtle mind

Sings aloud the tune whereto

Their pulses beat,

And march their feet,

And their members are combined.

By Sybarites beguiled,

He shall no task decline;

Merlin's mighty line

Extremes of nature reconciled, —

Bereaved a tyrant of his will,

And made the lion mild.

Songs can the tempest still,

Scattered on the stormy air,
Mould the year to fair increase,
And bring in poetic peace.

He shall not seek to weave,
In weak, unhappy times,
Efficacious rhymes;

Wait his returning strength.

Bird, that from the nadir's floor

To the zenith's top can soar,

The soaring orbit of the muse exceeds that journey's length.

Nor profane affect to hit

Or compass that, by meddling wit,

Which only the propitious mind
Publishes when 't is inclined.

There are open hours

When the God's will sallies free,

And the dull idiot might see

The flowing fortunes of a thousand years;

Sudden, at unawares,

Self-moved, fly-to the doors,

Nor sword of angels could reveal

What they conceal.

BACCHUS.

BRING me wine, but wine which never grew

In the belly of the grape,

Or grew on vine whose tap-roots, reaching through Under the Andes to the Cape,

Suffered no savor of the earth to scape.

Let its grapes the morn salute

From a nocturnal root,

Which feels the acrid juice

Of Styx and Erebus;

And turns the woe of Night,

By its own craft, to a more rich delight.

Whose ample leaves and tendrils curled

Among the silver hills of heaven,

Draw everlasting dew;

Wine of wine,

Blood of the world,

Form of forms, and mould of statures,

That I intoxicated,

And by the draught assimilated,

May float at pleasure through all natures;

The bird-language rightly spell,
And that which roses say so well:

Wine that is shed

Like the torrents of the sun

Up the horizon walls,

Or like the Atlantic streams, which run When the South Sea calls.

Water and bread,

Food which needs no transmuting,
Rainbow-flowering, wisdom-fruiting,
Wine which is already man,
Food which teach and reason can.

Music and wine are one,

That I, drinking this,

Shall hear far Chaos talk with me;
Kings unborn shall walk with me;
And the poor grass shall plot and plan
What it will do when it is man.

Quickened so, will I unlock

Every crypt of every rock.

I thank the joyful juice
For all I know;
Winds of remembering

Of the ancient being blow,
And seeming-solid walls of use
Open and flow.

Pour, Bacchus the remembering wine;
Retrieve the loss of me and mine!
Vine for vine be antidote,

And the grape requite the lote!
Haste to cure the old despair, -
Reason in Nature's lotus drenched,
The memory of ages quenched;
Give them again to shine;
Let wine repair what this undid;
And where the infection slid,
A dazzling memory revive;
Refresh the faded tints,

Recut the aged prints,

And write my old adventures with the pen

Which on the first day drew,

Upon the tablets blue,

The dancing Pleiads and eternal men.