Drinking Song - Inscription For An Antique Pitcher Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: ABAB ABAB CCCC BBBB BDBD DBDB BABA BBBB BEBE FBFB DBDB ABAB| Come old friend sit down and listen | A |
| From the pitcher placed between us | B |
| How the waters laugh and glisten | A |
| In the head of old Silenus | B |
| - | |
| Old Silenus bloated drunken | A |
| Led by his inebriate Satyrs | B |
| On his breast his head is sunken | A |
| Vacantly he leers and chatters | B |
| - | |
| Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow | C |
| Ivy crowns that brow supernal | C |
| As the forehead of Apollo | C |
| And possessing youth eternal | C |
| - | |
| Round about him fair Bacchantes | B |
| Bearing cymbals flutes and thyrses | B |
| Wild from Naxian groves or Zante's | B |
| Vineyards sing delirious verses | B |
| - | |
| Thus he won through all the nations | B |
| Bloodless victories and the farmer | D |
| Bore as trophies and oblations | B |
| Vines for banners ploughs for armor | D |
| - | |
| Judged by no o'erzealous rigor | D |
| Much this mystic throng expresses | B |
| Bacchus was the type of vigor | D |
| And Silenus of excesses | B |
| - | |
| These are ancient ethnic revels | B |
| Of a faith long since forsaken | A |
| Now the Satyrs changed to devils | B |
| Frighten mortals wine o'ertaken | A |
| - | |
| Now to rivulets from the mountains | B |
| Point the rods of fortune tellers | B |
| Youth perpetual dwells in fountains | B |
| Not in flasks and casks and cellars | B |
| - | |
| Claudius though he sang of flagons | B |
| And huge tankards filled with Rhenish | E |
| From that fiery blood of dragons | B |
| Never would his own replenish | E |
| - | |
| Even Redi though he chaunted | F |
| Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys | B |
| Never drank the wine he vaunted | F |
| In his dithyrambic sallies | B |
| - | |
| Then with water fill the pitcher | D |
| Wreathed about with classic fables | B |
| Ne'er Falernian threw a richer | D |
| Light upon Lucullus' tables | B |
| - | |
| Come old friend sit down and listen | A |
| As it passes thus between us | B |
| How its wavelets laugh and glisten | A |
| In the head of old Silenus | B |
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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