Thomas R. Lounsbury, ed. (1838–1915). Yale Book of American Verse. 1912.
Robert Hinckley Messinger 1811–1874
Robert Hinckley Messinger111 A Winter Wish
O
Ay, give the slippery juice
That drippeth from the grape thrown loose
Within the tun;
Plucked from beneath the cliff
Of sunny-sided Teneriffe,
And ripened ’neath the blink
Of India’s sun!
Peat whiskey hot,
Tempered with well-boiled water!
These make the long night shorter,—
Forgetting not
Good stout old English porter.
Ay, bring the hillside beech From where the owlets meet and screech, And ravens croak; The crackling pine, and cedar sweet; Bring too a clump of fragrant peat, Dug ’neath the fern; The knotted oak, A fagot too, perhap, Whose bright flame, dancing, winking, Shall light us at our drinking; While the oozing sap Shall make sweet music to our thinking. Ay, bring those nodes of wit, The brazen-clasped, the vellum writ, Time-honored tomes! The same my sire scanned before, The same my grandsire thumbèd o’er, The same his sire from college bore, The well-earned meed Of Oxford’s domes: Old Homer blind, Old Horace, rake Anacreon, by Old Tully, Plautus, Terence lie; Mort Arthur’s olden minstrelsie, Quaint Burton, quainter Spenser, ay! And Gervase Markham’s venerie— Nor leave behind The holye Book by which we live and die. Ay, bring those chosen few, The wise, the courtly, and the true, So rarely found; Him for my wine, him for my stud, Him for my easel, distich, bud In mountain walk! Bring Walter good, With soulful Fred, and learned Will, And thee, my alter ego (dearer still For every mood). These add a bouquet to my wine! These add a sparkle to my pine! If these I tine, Can books, or fire, or wine be good?