Poem by Charles Sangster

The Wine of Song

WITHIN Fancy's halls I sit and quaff
  Rich draughts of the wine of Song,
    And I drink and drink
    To the very brink
  Of delirium wild and strong,
Till I lose all sense of the outer world
  And see not the human throng.

The lyral chords of each rising thought
  Are swept by a hand unseen,
    And I glide and glide
    With my music bride,
  Where few spiritless souls have been;
And I soar afar on wings of sound
  With my fair Æolian queen.

Deep, deeper still, from the springs of Thought
  I quaff till the fount is dry,
    And I climb and climb
    To a height sublime
  Up the stars of some lyric sky,
Where I seem to rise upon airs that melt
  Into song as they pass by.

Millennial rounds of bliss I live,
  Withdrawn from my cumbrous clay,
    As I sweep and sweep
    Through infinite deep
  On deep of that starry spray;
Myself a sound on its world-wide round,
  A tone on its spheral way.

And wheresoe'er through the wondrous space
  My soul wings its noiseless flight,
    On their astral rounds
    Float divinest sounds,
  Unseen, save by spirit-sight,
Obeying some wise, eternal law,
  As fixed as the law of light.

But, oh, when my cup of dainty bliss
  Is drained of the wine of Song,
    How I fall and fall
    At the sober call
  Of the body that waiteth long
To hurry me back to its cares terrene,
  And earth's spiritless human throng!

1. Sonnet
2. The Rapid
3. Lyric to the Isles
4. The Soldiers of the Plough
5. The Plains of Abraham

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