Read "The Soul of Wine" by Charles Pierre Baudelaire online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
One eve in the bottle sang the soul of wine: / "Man, unto thee, dear disinherited, / I sing a song of love and light divine -- / Prisoned in glass beneath my seals of red.
"I know thou labourest on the hill of fire, / In sweat and pain beneath a flaming sun, / To give the life and soul my vines desire, / And I am grateful for thy labours done.
"For I find joys unnumbered when I lave / The throat of man by travail long outworn, / And his hot bosom is a sweeter grave / Of sounder sleep than my cold caves forlorn.
"Hearest thou not the echoing Sabbath sound? / The hope that whispers in my trembling breast? / Thy elbows on the table! gaze around; / Glorify me with joy and be at rest.
"To thy wife's eyes I'll bring their long-lost gleam, / I'll bring back to thy child his strength and light, / To him, life's fragile athlete I will seem / Rare oil that firms his muscles for the fight.
"I flow in man's heart as ambrosia flows; / The grain the eternal Sower casts in the sod -- / From our first loves the first fair verse arose, / Flower-like aspiring to the heavens and God! "