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 se- renely 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 pew- ter 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.