Satyr upon Drunkenness

"Tis pity Wine, which Nature meantTo Man in Kindness to present;And gave him kindly to caress,And cherish his frail Happiness,Of equal Virtue to renewHis wearied Mind, and Body too,Should (like the Cyder-tree in Eden,Which only grew, to be forbidden)No sooner come to be enjoy'd,But th' Owner's fatally destroy'd;And that, which she for Good design'd,Becomes the Ruin of Mankind,That for a little vain ExcessRuns out of all its Happiness,And makes the Friend of Truth and LoveTheir greatest Adversary prove;T'abuse a Blessing she bestow'dSo truly essential to his Good;To countervail his pensive Cares,And slavish Drudgery of Affairs;To teach him Judgment, Wit, and Sense,And, more than all these, Confidence;To pass his Times of RecreationIn choice and noble Conversation,Catch Truth and Reason unawares,As Men do Health in wholesome Airs;(While Fools their Conversants possessAs unawares with Sottishness)To gain Access a private WayTo Man's best Sense, by its own Key,Which painful Judgers strive in vainBy any other Course t'obtain;To pull off all Disguise, and viewThings as th'are natural, and true;Discover Fools and Knaves, allow'dFor wise and honest in the Crowd;With innocent and virtuous SportMake short Days long, and long Nights short,And Mirth the only AntidoteAgainst Diseases, ere th'are got;To save Health harmless from th'AccessBoth of the Med'cine, and Disease;Or make it help itself, secureAgainst the desperat'st Fit, the Cure.All these sublime PrerogativesOf Happiness to human LivesHe vainly throws away, and slightsFor Madness, Noise, and bloody Fights;When nothing can decide, but SwordsAnd Pots, the Right or Wrong of Words,Like Princes Titles; and he's outedThe Justice of his Cause, that's routed.No sooner has a Charge been sounded,With—Son of a Whore, and damn'd confoundedAnd the bold Signal giv'n, the Lye,But instantly the Bottles fly;Where Cups and Glasses are small Shot,And Cannon-ball a Pewter-pot.That Blood, that's hardly in the Vein,Is now remanded back again;Tho' sprung from Wine of the same Piece,And near a-kin, within Degrees,Strives to commit AssassinationsOn its own natural Relations;And those Twin-spirits so kind-hearted,That from their Friends so lately parted,No sooner several Ways are gone,But by themselves are set upon,Surpriz'd like Brother against Brother,And put to th' Sword by one another:So much more fierce are civil Wars,Than those between mere Foreigners;And Man himself with Wine possestMore savage than the wildest Beast.For Serpents, when they meet to water,Lay by their Poyson and their Nature:And fiercest Creatures, that repair,In thirsty Desarts, to their rareAnd distant River's Banks to drink,In Love and close Alliance link,And from their Mixture of strange SeedsProduce new, never heard of Breeds,To whom the fiercer UnicornBegins a large Health with his Horn;As Cuckolds put their Antidotes,When they drink Coffee, into th' Pots.While Man, with raging Drink inflam'd,Is far more savage and untam'd;Supplies his Loss of Wit and SenseWith Barbarousness and Insolence;Believes himself, the less he's ableThe more heroic and formidable;Lays by his Reason in his Bowls,As Turks are said to do their Souls,Until it has so often beenShut out of its Lodging, and let in,At length it never can attainTo find the right Way back again;Drinks all his Time away, and prunesThe End of's Life, as Vignerons,Cut short the Branches of a Vine,To make it bear more Plenty o'Wine;And that, which Nature did intendT'enlarge his Life, perverts t'its End.So Noah, when he anchor'd safe onThe Mountain's Top, his lofty Haven,And all the Passengers, he bore,Were on the new World set ashore,He made it next his chief DesignTo plant, and propagate a Vine,Which since has overwhelm'd and drown'dFar greater Numbers, on dry Ground,Of wretched Mankind, one by one,Than all the Flood before had done.