The Bohemian Raises his Glass

Don’t look down on the drunkards who perish
befuddling their sorrows with wine:
you don’t hate the flowers that flourish
light-headed in morning sunshine.
 
The eyes of the ladies attract us
to the high drunken rapture of passion;
their kisses are Bacchus’s nectars -
our lips are in thrall to sensation. 
 
Drunk with light goes Ophelia, sunken
in the gloom of a desolate plain;
the priest at the altar is drunken
with the blood of a god that is slain,
like the poet who gazes unblinking
at the boundless blue eye of the main.