Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COMRADE SONG, by PIERRE DE RONSARD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COMRADE SONG, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: We hold not in our power
Last Line: In vine-clad bowers drinking!
Subject(s): Drinks & Drinking; Flowers; Goddesses & Gods; Life; Love; Muses; Mythology; Singing & Singers; Wine


WE hold not in our power
The coming morrows' time;
Life has no certain dower.
Kings' favors we desire,
And waiting them, expire
Ere hope has passed its prime.

The man whom Death has ta'en
Eats not, and drinks no more,
Though barns be full of grain
And vaults have wine in store
On Earth, that he has bought.
They reach not even his thought.

Then what shall care bestead?
Go, Corydon, prepare
A couch with roses spread;
To banish cark and care
I'll lie outstretched for hours
Mid pots and heaped-up flowers.

And bring D'Aurat to me
And all that company
The Muses love so well,
Forgetting not Jodelle.
From eve to morn we'll feast
With fivescore cups at least!

Pour wine, and pour again!
In this great goblet golden
I'll drink to Estienne
Who saved from Lethe's treasures
The sweet, sweet Teian measures
Of that lost singer olden,

Anacreon the wine-king,
To whom the drinker's pleasure
Is due, and Bacchus' treasure
His flasks, and Love, and Venus,
And tipsy old Silenus
In vine-clad bowers drinking!





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