Yet never shall he find out, Airy mine,

A scent to match the mighty scent of wine.
Smell, Ariadne: this is Ambra wine:

Oh what a manly, what a vital scent!

'Tis of itself a nourishment

To the heart, and to the brain above it;

But what is more, the lips, the lips, boys, love it.

This fine Pumino here

Smacks a little of the austere ;

"Twere no respect to Bartlemytide

Not to have it at one's side;

No shame I feel to have it so near,

For shame it were to feel so much pride,

And leave it solely to the bumpkins,

To drink it at its natural time of pumpkins.
Yet every wine that hight

Pumino, hath no right

To take its place at one's round table :

I only do admit

That gallant race of it,

Which bears Albizis noble arms and label;

And which, descended of a chosen stock, Keepeth the mind awake and clear from any sordid smoke,

Keepeth the mind awake and clear from any sor

did smoke,

That cask ye lately broke,

On which a judgment I reveal,

From which lieth no appeal,

But hold; another beaker.

To make me a fit speaker!—

And now, Silenus, lend thy lolling ears:

Who will believe that hears?

In deep Gualfonda's lower deep, there lies

A garden for blest eyes;

A garden and a palace; the rich hold

Of great Riccardi, where he lives in gold.
Out of that garden with its billion-trillion

Of laughing vines, there comes-such a vermillion!
Verily it might face 'fore all the county,

The gallant carbuncle of Mezzomonte :

And yet, 'tis very well known, I sometimes go
To Mezzomonte for a week or so,

And take my fill, upon the greeny grass,

Of that red laugher through the lifted glass,—
That laugher red, that liquid carbuncle,
Rich with its cordial twinkle,

That gem, which fits e'en the Corsini's worth,
Gem of the Arno, and delight o'the earth.

The ruby dew that stills

Upon Valdarno's hills,

Touches the sense with odour so divine,

That not the violet,

With lips with morning wet,

Utters such sweetness from her little shrine.

When I drink of it, I rise

Over the hill that makes poets wise,

And in my voice and in my song,

Grow so sweet and grow so strong,

I challenge Phœbus with his delphic eyes.
Give me then, from a golden measure,

The ruby that is my treasure, my treasure ;

And like to the lark that goes maddening above,

I'll sing songs of love!

Songs will I sing more moving and fine,

Than the bubbling and quaffing of Gersole wine.

Then the rote shall go round,

And the cymbals kiss,

And I'll praise Ariadne,

My beauty, my bliss;

I'll sing of her tresses,
I'll sing of her kisses;

Now, now it increases,

The fervour increases,

The fervour, the boiling, and venomous bliss.
The grim god of war and the arrowy boy
Double-gallant me with desperate joy;

Love, love, and a fight!

I must make me a knight;

I must make me thy knight of the bath, fair friend,

A knight of the bathing that knows no end,
An order so noble, a rank so discreet,

Without any handle

For noise or for scandal,

Will give me a seat

With old Jove at his meat;

And thou made immortal, my beauty, my own,

Shall sit where the gods make a crown for his

throne.