If love be the heart's enslaver,
'Tis wine that subdues the head.
But which has the fairest flavour,
And whose is the soonest shed?
Wine waxes in power in that desolate hour
When the glory of love is dead.
Love lives on beauty's ray,
But night comes after day,
And when the exhausted sun
His high career has run,
The stars behind him stay,
And then the light that lasts consoles our darkening way.
When beauty and love are over,
And passion has spent its rage,
And the spectres of memory hover,
And glare on life's lonely stage,
'Tis wine that remains to kindle the veins
And strengthen the steps of age.
Love takes the taint of years,
And beauty disappears,
But wine in worth matures
The longer it endures,
And more divinely cheers,
And ripens with the suns and mellows with the spheres.




James Lionel Michael.