Explore "A Cup of Tea" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I have sipped, with drooping lashes, / Dreamy draughts of Verzenay; / I have flourished brandy-smashes / In the wildest sort of way; / I have joked with "Tom and Jerry"
Till wee hours ayont the twal' -- / But I've found my tea the very / Safest tipple of them all!
'Tis a mystical potation / That exceeds in warmth of glow / And divine exhilaration / All the drugs of long ago -- / All of old magicians' potions -- / Of Medea's filtered spells -- / Or of fabled isles and oceans / Where the Lotos-eater dwells!
Though I've reveled o'er late lunches / With _blase_ dramatic stars, / And absorbed their wit and punches / And the fumes of their cigars -- / Drank in the latest story, / With a cock-tail either end, -- / I have drained a deeper glory / In a cup of tea, my friend.
Green, Black, Moyune, Formosa, / Congou, Amboy, Pingsuey -- / No odds the name it knows -- ah!
Fill a cup of it for me!
And, as I clink my china / Against your goblet's brim, / My tea in steam shall twine a / Fragrant laurel round its rim.