While our rosy fillets shed
Freshness o’er each fervid head,
With many a cup and many a smile
The festal moments we beguile.
And while the harp, impassion’d, flings
Tuneful rapture from its strings,
Some airy nymph, with graceful bound,
Keeps measure to the music’s sound;
Waving, in her snowy hand,
The leafy Baccahalian wand,
Which, as the tripping wanton flies,
Trembles all over to her sighs.
A youth the while, with loosen’d hair,
Floating on the listless air,
Sings, to the wild harp’s tender tone,
A tale of woes, alas, his own;
And oh, the sadness in his sigh,
As o’er his lip the accents die!
Never sure on earth has been
Half so bright, so blest a scene.
It seems as Love himself had come
To make this spot his chosen home; —
And Venus, too, with all her wiles,
And Bacchus, sheddng rosy smiles,
All, all are here, to hail with me
To Genius of Festivity.