The Old Pewter Pitcher

I festoon for Bacchus no chaplet of roses,
I will vaunt not the vat--I've no homage for wine;
Panegyric of paint for convivial noses
Shall never find place in a lyric of mine.
Unseemly indeed were such rank exhibition
Of scorn for the statutes that seek to restrain,
By beneficent mandate of stern Prohibition,
The lust for the grape in the good State of
Maine.
So a truce to the bowl and its fervid excitement,
And down with the flagon, the goblet and stein!
My lyric exalts the more balmy enticement
Of a certain old humble companion of mine.
'Tis addressed
With a zest
Springing out of vague unrest
Stirring underneath my vest.
I'm obsessed
By a guest
Who has come at my behest
From the misty days of boyhood, borne serenely in the van
Of the friends that I'd forgotten in the cares that grind the man.
--You were just a pewter pitcher, a demure and dull old pot--
With a yee-yaw to your nozzle like the grimace of a sot.
The knob upon your cover had a truly rakish cant,
Your paunch was apoplectic and your handle had a slant
Of a most.convivial nature. But despite your seedy style
Not a guest upon the threshold got a more benignant smile
Than when upon a platter, flanked by apples and by pears,
You rose splashing full of cider up the dark old cellar stairs.
I'm sure that the fruit that we sacrificed duly
Each fall to the cruel embrace of the press
Had quaffed of the honey of Nature and truly
Deserved from her hand a more tender caress.
Pm sure that the sun kissed both fruit and the flower
With all the devotion his warm heart could bring,
Till Alcohol ceded his ominous power
And gall lost its bitter, the adder its sting,
For though round and round went the old pewter pitcher,
And chucklingly filled for us horn after horn,
We never saw dragon, blue goblin or witch, or
Required a hoop for our heads in the morn.
Here goes!
Here's to those
Who sat and warmed their toes
Drowning cares and frets and woes.
No one knows
How memory glows
As I see that ancient nose
Gleaming blandly in the circle of the friends of long ago
Within, the light; without, the night and the wind and drifting snow.
Then the dented pewter pitcher poured for us its amber stream
While the tinkling bubbles winked upon the brink with dancing gleam,
Ah, there was no guile within you as there were no gauds without
--Just a plain, old-fashioned fellow, with an awful homely snout;
And you never left us headaches and you didn't stir the bile,
And no guest upon the threshold got a more benignant smile
Than when, upon a platter, flanked by apples and by pears,
You rose splashing full of cider up the dark old cellar stairs.