Artistic Tribute 6

This weeks runner is Lord George Gordan Byron a British Romanticism poet. His poetry always seems to inspire me to write long pieces of form, and his poem "The Prisoner of Chillion" is an excellent discourse on the spirit of a once free man now broken. Here, however, is one of his shorter pieces.

Lines Inscribed Upon a Cup Formed From a Skull

Start not -nor deem my spirit fled:
In me behold the only skull
From which, unlike a living head,
Whatever flows is never dull.

I lived, I loved, I quaffed like thee;
I died: let earth my bones resign:
Fill up -thou canst not injure me;
The worm hath fouler lips than thine.

Better to hold the sparkling grape
Than nurse the earthworm's slimy brood,
And circle in the goblet's shape
The drink of gods than reptile's food.

Where once my wit, perchance, hath shone,
In aid of others' let me shine;
And when, alas! our brains are gone,
What nobler substitute than wine?

Quaff while thou canst; another race,
When thou and thine like me are sped,
May rescue thee from earth's embrace,
And rhyme and revel with the dead.

Why not -since through life's little day
Our heads such sad effects produce?
Redeemed from worms and wasting clay,
This chance is theirs to be of use.