Aurum Potabile.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1812, 16 February 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

Aurum Potabile.

BitoTHua Bards of every region — Biother Baids (your name is Legion !) Were you witla me while the twilight' Darkens up my pine-tree skylight — Were you gathered, representing Every land beneath the sun, Oh, what songs would be indited, Ere the earliest star is lighted, To the praise of vino d'oro, On the Hills of Lebanon ! Yes ; while all alone I qaaff its Lucid gold, and brightly laugh its Topaz waves and amber bubbles, Still the thought my pleasure troubles, That I quaff it all alone. 0 for Hafiz — glorious Persian I Keats with buoyant, gay diversion ; Mocking Schiller's grave immersion ; 0 for wreathed Anacreon ! Yet enough to have the living — They, the few, the rapture-giving 1 (Blessed more than in receiving), Eate, that frowns when laurels wreathe them, Once the solace might bequeath them, Once to taste of vino d'oro On the hills of Lebanon ! Lebanon, thou mount of story, Well we know thy sturdy glory Since the days of Solomon ; Well we know the Five old Cedars, Scaxred by ages— silent pleaders, Preaching in their gay sedateness, Of thy forest's fallen greatness, Of the vessels ot the Tyrian, And the palaces Assyrian, And the temple on Moriah To the High and Only One I Know the wealth of thine appointment — Myrrh and aloes, gum and ointment ; But we knew not, till we clomb thee, Of the nectar dropping from thee — Of the pure pellucid Ophir In the cups of vino d'oro, On the Hills of Lebanon ! We have drunk, and we have eaten, Where Egyptian sheaves are beaten ; Tasted Judah's milk and honey On his mountains, bare and sunny ; Drained ambrosial bowls, that ask U 3 Never more to leave Damascus ; And have sung a vintage prcan To the grapes of isles iEgean, And the flasks of Orvieto, Eipened in the lloman sun ; But the liquor here surpasses All that beams in earthly glasses. 'Tis of this that Paracelsus (His elixir vita?) tells us, That to happier shores can float us Than Lethean stems of lotus, And the vigor of the morning Straight restores when day id done. Then, before the sunset waneth, While the rosy tide, that staineth Earth, and sky, and sea, remaineth, We will take the fortune proffered — Ne'er again to be re-offered, We will drink of vino d'oro, On the Hills of Lebanon 1 Vino d'oro 1 vino d'oro 1 — Golden blood of Lebanon. — Bayard Taylor.