Inscription for an Antique Pitcher

Come, old friend! sit down and listen!
  From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
  In the head of old Silenus! 

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
  Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
  Vacantly he leers and chatters. 

Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
  Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,
  And possessing youth eternal. 

Round about him, fair Bacchantes,
  Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's
  Vineyards, sing delirious verses. 

Thus he won, through all the nations,
  Bloodless victories, and the farmer
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
  Vines for banners, ploughs for armor. 

Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,
  Much this mystic throng expresses:
Bacchus was the type of vigor,
  And Silenus of excesses. 

These are ancient ethnic revels,
  Of a faith long since forsaken;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
  Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken. 

Now to rivulets from the mountains
  Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,--
  Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars. 

Claudius, though he sang of flagons
  And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons
  Never would his own replenish. 

Even Redi, though he chaunted
  Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
  In his dithyrambic sallies. 

Then with water fill the pitcher
  Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne'er Falernian threw a richer
  Light upon Lucullus' tables. 

Come, old friend, sit down and listen
  As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
  In the head of old Silenus!