Classic Poem

And the Bordeaux plum/
from Marmande (France) in parenthesis with
A.G. on the base of the jar — Alexis Godillot —
unevenly blown beside a bubble that
is green when held up to the light; they
are a fine duet; the screw-top
for this graft-grown briar-black bloom
on black-thorn pigeon's-blood,
is, like Certosa, sealed with foil. Appropriate custom.

And they keep under
glass also, camellias catalogued by
lines across the leaf. The French are a cruel race — willing
to squeeze the diner's cucumber or broil a
meal on vine-shoots. Gloria mundi
with a leaf two inches, nine lines
broad, they have; and the smaller,
Camellia Sabina
with amanita-white petals; there are several of her

pale pinwheels, and pale
stripe that looks as if on a mushroom the
sliver from a beet-root carved into a rose were laid. " Dry
the windows with a cloth fastened to a staff.
In the camellia-house there must be
no smoke from the stove, or dew on
the windows, lest the plants ail, "
the amateur is told;
" mistakes are irreparable and nothing will avail. "

A scentless nosegay
is thus formed in the midst of the bouquet
from bottles, casks and corks, for sixty-four million red wines
and twenty million white, which Bordeaux merchants
and lawyers " have spent a great deal of
trouble " to select, from what was
and what was not Bordeaux. A
food-grape, however — " born
of nature and of art " — is true ground for the grape-holiday.

The food of a wild
mouse in some countries is wild parsnip- or sunflower- or
morning-glory-seed, with an occasional
grape. Underneath the vines of the Bolzano
grape of Italy, the Prince of Tails
might stroll. Does yonder mouse with a
grape in its hand and its child
in its mouth, not portray
the Spanish fleece suspended by the neck? In that well-piled

larder above your
head, the picture of what you will eat is
looked at from the end of the avenue. The wire cage is
locked, but by bending down and studying the
roof, it is possible to see the
pantomime of Persian thought: the
gilded, too tight undemure
coat of gems unruined
by the rain — each small pebble of jade that refused to mature,

plucked delicately
off. Off jewelry not meant to keep Tom
Thumb, the cavalry cadet, on his Italian upland
meadow-mouse, from looking at the grapes beneath
the interrupted light from them, and
dashing round the concours hippique
of the tent, in a flurry
of eels, scallops, serpents,
and other shadows from the blue of the green canopy.

The wine-cellar? No.
It accomplishes nothing and makes the
soul heavy. The gleaning is more than the vintage, though the
history de la Vigne et du vin has placed
mirabelle in the bibliotheque
unique depuis seventeen-ninety-seven.
(Close the window,
says the Abbe Berlese,
For Sabina born under glass.) O generous Bolzano!