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Title: The Old Drinking Gourd
Author: Cotton Noe [
More Titles by Noe]
A deep alcove where clambering vine
Enfashioned wreathes of green festoon,
Where through the long, long afternoon
No ray of summer's sultry shine
E'er kissed the rustic grape-vine swing:
High up the purpling muscadine
Clung close to where the waters poured,
And he saw the glint of the redbird's wing
In the crystal wave of the mossy spring,
As she stooped for the Old Drinking Gourd.
The odor tint of elder bloom
The zephyrs wafted through the spray
Was fresh as dew at dawn of day,
Caught in the geometric loom,
Arachne plies with subtle hand:
A pigeon bathed his snowy plume,
A fading speck the vulture soared;
And a tide swept in across the sand
As they stood on the brink of the golden strand
And drank from the Old Drinking Gourd.
* * * * *
A palace wrought of art sublime
Where antique paintings haunt the walls,
And gilded foot as silent falls
In depths of plush, as flight of time,
And liquid music softer blows
Than Hymen's mellow golden chime:
They plighted troth beneath the sword
Of the knight that wore the blood red rose;
But they drank of the cup that never flows
From the bowl of the Old Drinking Gourd.
Now sunset spills his scarlet dyes
Through fleecy rifts of snowy cloud,
And night puts on her ebon shroud,
And stars look out of wintry skies:
Still spacious halls with revels ring
Where chivalry with beauty vies,
And red-wine flows at festive board.
But oh! for the cove where the redbirds sing
By the crystal wave of the mossy spring,
And a draught from the Old Drinking Gourd.
[The end]
Cotton Noe's poem: Old Drinking Gourd
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