Classic Poem

( UPON DRUNKENNESS .)

'T IS pity wine, which Nature meant
To man in kindness to present,
And gave him kindly, to caress
And cherish his frail happiness,
Of equal virtue to renew
His wearied mind and body too,
Should (like the cider-tree in Eden,
Which only grew to be forbidden)
No sooner come to be enjoy'd,
But the' owner's fatally destroy'd;
And that which she for good design'd,
Becomes the ruin of mankind,
That for a little vain excess
Runs out of all its happiness,
And makes the friend of Truth and Love
Their greatest adversary prove;
To' abuse a blessing she bestow'd
So truly' essential to his good,
To countervail his pensive cares,
And slavish drudgery of affairs;
To teach him judgment, wit, and sense,
And, more than all these, confidence;
To pass his times of recreation
In choice and noble conversation,
Catch truth and reason unawares,
As men do health in wholesome airs;
(While fools their conversants possess
As unawares with sottishness)
To gain access a private way
To man's best sense, by its own key,
Which painful judgers strive in vain
By any other course to' obtain;
To pull off all disguise, and view
Things as they 're natural and true;
Discover fools and knaves, allow'd
For wise and honest in the crowd;
With innocent and virtuous sport
Make short days long, and long nights short,
And mirth, the only antidote
Against diseases ere they 're got;
To save health harmless from the' access
Both of the med'cine and disease;
Or make it help itself, secure
Against the desperat'st fit, the cure.
All these sublime prerogatives
Of happiness to human lives,
He vainly throws away, and slights
For madness, noise, and bloody fights;
When nothing can decide, but swords
And pots, the right or wrong of words,
Like princes' titles; and he's outed
The justice of his cause, that's routed.
No sooner has a charge been sounded
With — Son of a whore , and damn'd confounded ,
And the bold signal giv'n, the lie;
But instantly the bottles fly,
Where cups and glasses are small shot,
And cannon-ball a pewter-pot:
That blood, that 's hardly in the vein,
Is now remanded back again;
Though sprung from wine of the same piece,
And near a-kin, within degrees,
Strives to commit assassinations
On its own natural relations;
And those twin-spirits, so kind-hearted,
That from their friends so lately parted,
No sooner several ways are gone,
But by themselves are set upon,
Surpris'd like brother against brother,
And put to the' sword by one another:
So much more fierce are civil wars,
Than those between mere foreigners;
And man himself, with wine possest,
More savage than the wildest beast.
For serpents, when they meet to water,
Lay by their poison and their nature;
And fiercest creatures, that repair,
In thirsty deserts, to their rare
And distant rivers' banks to drink,
In love and close alliance link;
And from their mixture of strange seeds
Produce new, never-heard-of breeds,
To whom the fiercer unicorn
Begins a large health with his horn;
As cuckolds put their antidotes,
When they drink coffee, into the' pots:
While man, with raging drink inflam'd,
Is far more savage and untam'd;
Supplies his loss of wit and sense
With barbarousness and insolence;
Believes himself, the less he's able,
The more heroic and formidable;
Lays by his reason in his bowls,
(As Turks are said to do their souls)
Until it has so often been
Shut out of its lodging, and let in,
At length it never can attain
To find the right way back again;
Drinks all his time away, and prunes
The end of 's life as vignerons
Cut short the branches of a vine,
To make it bear more plenty o' wine;
And that which Nature did intend
To' enlarge his life, perverts to' its end.
So Noah, when he anchor'd safe on
The mountain's top, his lofty haven,
And all the passengers he bore
Were on the new world set ashore,
He made it next his chief design
To plant and propagate a vine;
Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'd
Far greater numbers, on dry ground,
Of wretched mankind, one by one,
Than all the flood before had done.