A Drinking Song

Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.

William Butler Yeats

William Butler Yeats was an Irish poet, dramatist, prose writer, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. A pillar of both the Irish and British literary establishments, in his later years he served as an Irish Senator for two terms. Yeats was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival and was co-founder of the Abbey Theatre. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

William Butler Yeats

The Curse Of Cromwell

William Butler Yeats, Simple Poetry

The Players Ask For A Blessing On The Psalteries And On Themselves

William Butler Yeats, Simple Poetry

Breasal The Fisherman

William Butler Yeats, Simple Poetry

Chosen

William Butler Yeats, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

When The Wine-Cup Is Smiling. (Italian Air.)

When the wine-cup is smiling before us,
    And we pledge round to hearts that are true, boy, true,
Then the sky of this life opens o'er us,
    And Heaven gives a glimpse of its blue.
Talk of Adam in Eden reclining,
    We are better, far better off thus, boy, thus;
For him but two bright eyes were shining--
    See, what numbers are sparkling for us!

When on one side the grape-juice is dancing,
    While on t'other a blue eye beams, boy, beams,
'Tis enough, 'twixt the wine and the glancing,
    To disturb even a saint from his dreams.
Yet, tho' life like a river is flowing,
    I care not how fast it goes on, boy, on,
So the grape on its bank is still growing,
    And Love lights the waves as they run.

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Quaff The Glass, The Wine Is Red.

    Quaff the glass, the wine is red,
        And the rose of youth is glowing,
    While the toils of life are fled
        And the snows of age are going;
    Quaff it with a hearty will,
        Quaff it deep and quaff forever;
    Wine will every sorrow kill,
        And destroy the pleasures never.

    When the heart beats sad and low,
        Drink its gladness like a river;
    When the soul is weak with woe,
        Quaff and be a cheerful liver;
    Never, never, life, despair,
        While a cup of hope is nigh thee;
    Bend not under loads of care
        While the fount of joy is by thee!

    If the fickle friendships end
        And thy fortune be a sad one,
    Claim, O, claim, as truest friend,
        Ruby wine, the...

Freeman Edwin Miller

Wine, Women, And Song

Ovarus mine,
Plant thou the vine
Within this kindly soil of Tibur;
Nor temporal woes,
Nor spiritual, knows
The man who's a discreet imbiber.
For who doth croak
Of being broke,
Or who of warfare, after drinking?
With bowl atween us,
Of smiling Venus
And Bacchus shall we sing, I'm thinking.

Of symptoms fell
Which brawls impel,
Historic data give us warning;
The wretch who fights
When full, of nights,
Is bound to have a head next morning.
I do not scorn
A friendly horn,
But noisy toots, I can't abide 'em!
Your howling bat
Is stale and flat
To one who knows, because he's tried 'em!

The secrets of
The life I love
(Companionship with girls and toddy)
I would not drag
With drunken brag
Into ...

Eugene Field

Odes Of Anacreon - Ode L.

^[1]


When wine I quaff, before my eyes
Dreams of poetic glory rise;^[2]
And freshened by the goblet's dews,
My soul invokes the heavenly Muse,
When wine I drink, all sorrow's o'er;
I think of doubts and fears no more;
But scatter to the railing wind
Each gloomy phantom of the mind.
When I drink wine, the ethereal boy,
Bacchus himself, partakes my joy;
And while we dance through vernal bowers,
Whose every breath comes fresh from flowers,
In wine he makes my senses swim,
Till the gale breathes of naught but him!

    Again I drink,--and, lo, there seems
A calmer light to fill my dreams;
The lately ruffled wreath I spread
With steadier hand around my head;
Then take the lyre, and sing "how blest
The life of...

Thomas Moore

Drinking Song - 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 ...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love And Wine.

'Tis wine that cheers the soul of man,
With subtle and seductive flow;
It warms the heart, as naught else can,
And banishes regret, and woe.

It keeps alive the flick'ring flame,
Which strives to burn with feeble force
Within the heart, so dull and tame,
But still of life, the present source.

It warms up this fount of life,
And sends life's fluid here and there;
And nerves and brain, in gladsome strife,
Forget their dull and dark despair.

And what is love, if 'tis not wine,
Refin'd, distill'd from grossness, tho',
More potent than the juice of vine,
And bringing greater joy, and woe?

Does it not, too, refresh, revive,
And oft intoxicate the brain,
And make the being all alive
With keenest joy, or keenest pain?

A...

Thomas Frederick Young