In my merry mood of drinking

In my merry mood of drinking
Pray how fared your preachment, how?
How from dark ways labyrinthine
Did I find an exit, how?

How has wine’s ecstatic splendor
Aught to do with timid saints?
From hid bowers do you remember
Hearing songs with preachers’ plaints?

My heart shuns the cloistral silence,
Hooded cowl, hypocrisy,
How can I best bid defiance
With this wine-born ecstacy?

Days of joy--they go and leave me
Lone and sad with dreams of yore;
Kisses where--caresses? Tell me!
And all such old love’s sweet store?

What use that love softly handles
Hearts that hatred hard has made?
Oh! Joy’s gay extinguished candles--
In what grave, pray, are they laid?

Once the dust from off your threshold
Was like balsam to my eyes,
Now pray tell me--now I’m grown old--
Where an equal pleasure lies?