Come! let Mirth our hours employ,
The jolly God inspires;
The rosy juice our bosom fires,
And tunes our souls to joy.
See, great Bacchus now descending,
Gay, with blushing honours crown'd;
Sprightly Mirth and Love attending,
Around him wait,
In smiling state —
Let Echo resound,
Let Echo resound
The joyful news all around.

Fond Mortals come, if love perplex,
In Wine relief you'll find;
Who'd whine for womens giddy sex
More fickle than the wind?
If beauty's bloom thy fancy warms,
Here, see her shine,
Cloath'd in superior charms;
More lovely than the blushing morn,
When first the op'ning day
Bedecks the thorn,
And makes the meadows gay.
Here see her in her crystal shrine;
See and adore; confess her all divine,
The Queen of Love and Joy.
Heed not thy Chloe's scorn—
This sparkling glass,
With winning grace,
Shall ever meet thy fond embrace,
And never, never, never cloy,
No never, never cloy.

Here, Poet! see, Castalia's spring—
Come, give me a bumper, I'll mount to the skies,
Another, another—'Tis done! I arise;
On fancy's wing,
I mount, I sing,
And now, sublime,
Parnassus' lofty top I climb —
But hark! what sounds are these I hear,
Soft as the dream of her in love,
Or Zephyr's whisp'ring thro' the Grove?
And now, more solemn far than fun'ral woe,
The heavy numbers flow!
And now again,
The varied strain,
Grown louder and bolder, strikes quick on the ear,
And thrills thro' ev'ry vein.

'Tis Pindar's song!
His softer notes the fanning gales
Waft across the spicy vales,
While, thro' the air,
Loud whirlwinds bear
The harsher notes along.
Inspir'd by Wine,
He leaves the lazy croud below,
Who never dar'd to peep abroad,
And, mounting to his native sky,
For ever there shall shine.
No more I'll plod
The beaten road;
Like him inspir'd, like him I'll mount on high;
Like his my strain shall sow.

Haste, ye Mortals! leave your sorrow;
Let pleasure crown to day—to morrow
Yield to fate.
Join the universal chorus,
Bacchus reigns,
Ever great;
Bacchus reigns
Ever glorious—
Hark! the joyful groves rebound,
Sporting breezes catch the sound,
And tell to hill and dale around —
"Bacchus reigns"
While far away,
The busy Echoes die away.

Small type of great ones, that do hum
Within this whole world's narrow room,
That with a busie hollow noise
Catch at the people's vainer voice,
And with spread sails play with their breath,
Whose very hails new christen death.
Poor Fly, caught in an airy net,
Thy wings have fetter'd now thy feet;
Where, like a Lyon in a toyl,
Howere thou keep'st a noble coyl,
And beat'st thy gen'rous breast, that o're
The plains thy fatal buzzes rore,
Till thy all-bellyd foe (round elf)
Hath quarter'd thee within himself.

Was it not better once to play
I' th' light of a majestick ray,
Where, though too neer and bold, the fire
Might sindge thy upper down attire,
And thou i' th' storm to loose an eye.
A wing, or a self-trapping thigh:
Yet hadst thou fal'n like him, whose coil
Made fishes in the sea to broyl,
When now th'ast scap'd the noble flame;
Trapp'd basely in a slimy frame,
And free of air, thou art become
Slave to the spawn of mud and lome?

Nor is't enough thy self do's dresse
To thy swoln lord a num'rous messe,
And by degrees thy thin veins bleed,
And piecemeal dost his poyson feed;
But now devour'd, art like to be
A net spun for thy familie,
And, straight expanded in the air,
Hang'st for thy issue too a snare.
Strange witty death and cruel ill
That, killing thee, thou thine dost kill!
Like pies, in whose entombed ark
All fowl crowd downward to a lark,
Thou art thine en'mies' sepulcher,
And in thee buriest, too, thine heir.

Yet Fates a glory have reserv'd
For one so highly hath deserv'd.
As the rhinoceros doth dy
Under his castle-enemy,
As through the cranes trunk throat doth speed,
The aspe doth on his feeder feed;
Fall yet triumphant in thy woe,
Bound with the entrails of thy foe.