copyright, Kellscraft Studio, 1999
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GIVE ME THE OLD



         OLD wine to drink! –
     Ay, give me the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
          Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,
     And ripened 'neath the blink
          Of India's sun!
          Peat whiskey hot,
Tempered with well-boiled water!
These make the long night shorter, –
          Forgetting not
Good stout old English porter.

     Old wood to burn! –
Ay, bring the hill-side beech
From where the owlets meet and screech,
     And ravens croak;
The crackling pine, and cedar sweet;
Bring too a clump of fragrant peat,
     Dug 'neath the fern;
          The knotted oak,
          A faggot too, perhap
Whose bright flame, dancing, winking,
Shall light us at our drinking;
          While the oozing sap
Shall make sweet music to our thinking.

          Old books to read! –
Ay, bring those nodes of wit,
The brazen-clasped, the vellum writ,
          Time-honored tomes!
The same my sire scanned before,
The same my grandsire thumbed o'er,
The same his sire from college bore,
          The well-earned meed
          Of Oxford's domes:
Old Homer blind,
Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by
Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie;
Mort Arthur's olden minstrelsie,
Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay!
And Gervase Markham's venerie –
          Nor leave behind
The Holye Book by which we live and die.

          Old friends to talk! –
Ay, bring those chosen few,
The wise, the courtly, and the true,
          So rarely found;
Him for my wine, him for my stud,
Him for my easel, distich, bud
          In mountain walk!
Bring Walter good:
With soulful Fred; and learned Will,
And thee, my alter ego, (dearer still
          For every word.).

                                 – ROBERT HINCKLEY MESSINGER


 
copyright, Kellscraft Studio, 1999
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