How Yearn I For A Potioned Wine – This Night! Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

How yearn I for a potioned wine – this night!
How race and run the drops of blood
How race the red, red drops of blood – this night!

How from the face of heaven the clouds
Seem swept away by some full-scathing broom
How smiling the pale moon!

Ah! methinks that the moon, the modest moon
Has in itself somehow sometime infused
The red, red drops of Bacchus – lo in it
The wanness cool is turning to a red
And on its cheek already ruddying goeth:
And merry looks the moon this merry night.

Never would I have thought the moon to be
Votary of Bacchus and his ivied green:
Nor of its conquest by the sweaty arms
Of satyrs fauns and nymphs of Bacchus wild:

And in my cheeks like the wan moon
So will I potion myself with red, red wine
Cool from the earth in cooler beakers kept
Delicious as the drops of red, red blood
Were to Dracula.

Then will I yearn to sleep and drowse and dream.