"I am old, but let me drink; Bring me spices, bring me wine I remember, when I think,

That my youth was half divine.

"Wine is good for shrivell❜d lips,
When a blanket wraps the day,
When the rotten woodland drips,
And the leaf is stamp'd in clay.

"Sit thee down, and have no shame, Cheek by jowl, and knee by knee. What care I for any name?

What for order or degree?

"Let me screw thee up a peg:

Let me loose thy tongue with wine: Callest thou that thing a leg?

Which is thinnest ? thine or mine?

"Thou shalt not be saved by works:
Thou hast been a sinner too:
Ruin'd trunks on wither'd forks,
Empty scarecrows, I and you!

"Fill the cup, and fill the can: Have a rouse before the morn:

Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.

"We are men of ruin'd blood;

Therefore comes it we are wise.

Fish are we that love the mud,
Rising to no fancy-flies.

"Name and fame! to fly sublime

Thro' the courts, the camps, the schools,

Is to be the ball of Time,

Bandied by the hands of fools.

'Friendship!

- to be two in one

Let the canting liar pack!

Well I know, when I am gone,

How she mouths behind my back.

"Virtue! I to be good and just Every heart, when sifted well, Is a clot of warmer dust,

Mix'd with cunning sparks of hell.

"O! we two as well can look
Whited thought and cleanly life
As the priest, above his book
Leering at his neighbor's wife.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can: Have a rouse before the morn:

Every moment dies a man,

Every moment one is born.

"Drink, and let the parties rave: They are fill'd with idle spleen; Rising, falling, like a wave,

For they know not what they mean.

"He that roars for liberty

Faster binds a tyrant's power;

And the tyrant's cruel glee

Forces on the freer hour.

"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.

"Greet her with applausive breath, Freedom, gayly doth she tread;

In her right a civic wreath,

In her left a human head.

"No, I love not what is new; She is of an ancient house: And I think we know the hue

Of that cap upon her brows.

"Let her go! her thirst she slakes
Where the bloody conduit runs :
Then her sweetest meal she makes
On the first-born of her sons.

"Chant me now some wicked stave, Till thy drooping courage rise, And the glow-worm of the grave Glimmer in thy rheumy eyes.

"Fear not thou to loose thy tongue;
Set thy hoary fancies free;
What is loathsome to the young
Savors well to thee and me.

"Change, reverting to the years, When thy nerves could understand What there is in loving tears,

And the warmth of hand in hand.

"Tell me tales of thy first love
April hopes, the fools of chance;
Till the graves begin to move,
And the dead begin to dance.

"Fill the can, and fill the cup:
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.

"Trooping from their mouldy dens The chap-fallen circle spreads: Welcome, fellow-citizens,

Hollow hearts and empty heads!

"You are bones, and what of that?
Every face, however full,
Padded round with flesh and fat,
Is but modell'd on a skull.

"Death is king, and Vivat Rex!
Tread a measure on the stones,
Madam if I know your sex,
From the fashion of your bones.

"No, I cannot praise the fire
In your eye nor yet your “p·

All the more do I admire

Joints of cunning workmanship.

"Lo! God's likeness the ground-plan-
Neither modell'd, glazed, or framed:
Buss me, thou rough sketch of man,
Far too naked to be shamed!

“Drink to Fortune, drink to Chance,
While we keep a little breath!
Drink to heavy Ignorance!

Hob-and-nob with brother Death!

"Thou art mazed, the night is long,
And the longer night is near:
What! I am not all as wrong
As a bitter jest is dear.

"Youthful hopes, by scores, to all,

When the locks are crisp and curl'd;

Unto me my maudlin gall

And my mockeries of the world.

"Fill the cup, and fill the can!

Mingle madness, mingle scorn!

Dregs of life, and lees of man:

Yet we will not die forlorn."
5.

The voice grew faint: there came a further change:
Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range:
Below were men and horses pierced with worms,
And slowly quickening into lower forms;
By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross,
Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss.
Then some one spake: "Behold! it was a crime
Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time."
Another said: The crime of sense became
The crime of malice, and is equal blame.”
And one: "He had not wholly quench'd his power;
A little grain of conscience made him sour."
At last I heard a voice upon the slope
Cry to the summit, "Is there any hope?

To which an answer peal'd from that high land,

But in a tongue no man could understand;
And on the glimmering limit far withdrawn
God made Himself an awful rose of dawn.

COME not, when I am dead,

To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head,

And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by.

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime
I care no longer, being all unblest:

Wed whom thou wilt, but I am sick of Time,
And I desire to rest.

Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie:
Go by, go by.

THE EAGLE.

FRAGMENT.

HE clasps the crag with hooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ring'd with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain-walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

MOVE eastward, happy earth, and leave
Yon orange sunset waning slow:

From fringes of the faded eve,
O, happy planet, eastward go;
Till over thy dark shoulder glow
Thy silver sister-world, and rise
To glass herself in dewy eyes
That watch me from the glen below