Of wonderful mystery;

While the drunk Mænades,

And glad Egipani,

To the rude rapture and mystical wording

Bear a loud burden.

From the hill before us

Let the villagers raise o'er us

Clappings to our chorus;

And all around resound

Talabalács, tamburins, and horns,

And pipes, and bagpipes, and the things you

know boys,

That cry out Ho-boys!

While with a hundred kits about their ears,

A hundred little rustic foresters

Strum, as they ought to do, the Dabbuda,
And sing us, and dance us, the Bombababa.

And if in your singing it,
Dancing and flinging it,

Any of ye tire awhile,

And become savage for
Greedy-great thirstiness,

Down on the grass again,
Let the feast flow again,
Falderallalling it

With quips and triple rhymes,
Motetts and Couplets,

Sonnets and Canticles;

Then for the pretty plays

Of Flowers and What Flowers;

And ever and always

We'll quaff at our intervals

Cups of that purple grape,

Which when ye grapple, ye

Bless Monterappoli.

Aye, and we'll marry it

With the sweet Mammolo,

Which from the wine press comes sparkling, and

rushes,

In bottles and cellars to hide its young blushes,
What time ripe Autumn, in the flush o' the sun,
Meets his friend Magalotti at the fountain,
The very fountain, and the very stone,

At which old Æson christened his lone mountain.

This well of a goblet, so round and so long,
So full of wine, so gallant and strong,

That it draws one's teeth in its frolics and freaks

And squeezes the tears from the sides of one's

cheeks,

Like a torrent it comes, all swollen and swift,

And fills one's throat like a mountain rift,

And dashes so headlong, and plays such pranks,

It almost threatens to burst the banks.

No wonder; for down from the heights it came,

Where the Fiesolan Atlas, of hoary fame,

Basks his strength in the blaze of noon,

And warms his old sides with the toasting sun. Long live Fiesole, green old name!

And with his long life to thy sylvan fame,

Lovely Maiano, lord of dells,

Where my gentle Salviati dwells.

Many a time and oft doth he

Crown me with bumpers full fervently,
And I, in return, preserve him still

From every crude and importunate ill.
I keep by my side,

For my joy and my pride,

That gallant in chief of his royal cellar
Val di Marina, the blithe care-killer;
But with the wine yclept Val di Botte,
Day and night I could flout me the gouty.
Precious it is I know, in the eyes

Of the masters, the masters, of those who are wise.

A glass of it brimming, a full-flowing cup,

Goes to my heart, and so lays it up,

That not my Salvini, that book o' the south, Could tell it, for all the tongues in his mouth. If Maggi the wise, the Milanese wit,

'Mid their fat Lombard suppers but lighted on it, Even the people grossly cœnaculous,

Over a bumper would find him miraculous.

Maggi, whatever his readers may think,
Puts no faith in Hippocrene drink;

No faith in that lying-tongued water has he,

Nor goes for his crown to a sapless tree.

For other paths are his, far loftier

He

ways:

opens towards heav'n a road of roads, Rare unto mortal foot, and only pays His golden song to heroes and to gods.

And truly most heroic were his praise,
If turning from his Lesmian, like a Cruscan,