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  Withdrawn from my cumbrous clay,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!