The Old Masters

In smoky inns whose loft is reached by ladders,
And with a grimy ceiling splashed by shocks
Of hanging hams, black-puddings, onions, bladders,
Rosaries of stuffed game, capons, geese, and cocks
Around a groaning table sit the gluttons
Before the bleeding viands stuck with forks,
Already loosening their waistcoat buttons,
With wet mouths when from flagons leap the cork
Teniers, and Brackenburgh, and Brauwer, shaken
With listening to Jan Steen's uproarious wit,
Holding their bellies dithering with bacon,
Wiping their chins, watching the hissing spit.
Their heavy-bodied Hebes, with their curving
Bosoms in linen white without a stain,
Are going round, and in long jets are serving
Wine that a sunbeam filters through the pane,
Before it sets on fire the kettles' paunches
The Queens of Tippling are these women, whom
Their swearing lovers, greedy of their haunches,
Belabour as befits their youth in bloom,
With sweating temples, blazing eyes, and lolling
Tongue that keeps singing songs obscenely gay,
With brandished fists, bodies together rolling,
Blows fit to bruise their carcases, while they,
With mouth for songs aye ready, throat for bumpers,
And blood for ever level with their skins,
Dance fit to split the floor, they are such jumpers,
And butt their dancer as around he spins,
And lick his face in kisses endless seeming,
Then fall with ransacked corsage, wet with heat.
A smell of bacon fat is richly steaming
From the huge platters charged with juicy meat;
The roasts are passed around, in gravy swimming,
Under the noses of the guests, and passed
Around again, with fresh relays of trimming.
And in the kitchen drudges wash up fast
The platters to be sent back to the table;
The dressers bulge, crowded with crockery;
The cellars hold as much as they are able;
And round the estrade where this agape
In glowing red, from pegs hang baskets, ladles,
Strainers, and saucepans, candlesticks, and flasks.
Two monkeys in a corner show their navels,
Throning, with glass in hand, on two twin casks;
A mellow light on every angle glimmers,
Shines on the door-knob, through the great keyhole,
Clings to a pestle, filters through the skimmers,
Is jewelled on the monster gala bowl,
And slanting on the heated hearthstone sickens,
Where, o'er the embers, turns to brown the flesh
Of rosy sucking-pigs and fat cock-chickens,
That whet the edge of appetite afresh.
From dawn to eve, from eve to dawn, and after,
The masters with their women revel hold--
Women who play a farce of opulent laughter:
Farce cynical, obscene, with sleeves uprolled,
In corsage ript a flowering gorge not hiding,
Belly that shakes with jollity, bright eyes.
Noises of orgy and of rut are gliding,
Rumbling, and hissing, till they end in cries;
A noise of jammed iron and of vessels banging;
Brauwer and Steen tilt baskets on their crowns;
Brackenburgh is two lids together clanging;
Others with pokers fiddle gridirons, clowns
Are all of them, eager to show their mettle;
They dance round those who lie with feet in air;
They scrape the frying-pan, they scrape the kettle;
And the eldest are the steadiest gluttons there,
Keenest in kisses, and the last to tumble;
With greasy nose they lick the casseroles;
One of them makes a rusty fiddle grumble,
Whose bow exhausts itself in cabrioles;
Some are in corners vomiting, and others
Are snoring with their arms hung round their seats
Babies are bawling for their sweating mothers
To stuff their little mouths with monster teats.
Men, women, children, all stuffed full to bursting;
Appetites ravening, and instincts rife,
Furies of stomach, and of throats athirsting,
Debauchery, explosion of rich life,
In which these master gluttons, never sated,
Too genuine for insipidities,
Pitching their easels lustily, created
Between two drinking-bouts a masterpiece.