Now that the tropic August days are ended
Come Bacchus and Silenus great of girth
And Autumn with her kindly witchcraft blended
Of suns and showers and the dark creative earth,
To stain the swelling grape-skins and to muster
The flavorous juice in every ripening cluster
Where, over all the southern slopes extended,
The laden vineyards wait the vintage-birth.
So in the golden-hued September weather
The master of the vineyard and his men
Bearing small wicker baskets pace together
Down the leaf-shadowed alleys, pausing when
Among the vines thick-leaved and deeply-rooted
They chance upon those bunches heaviest-fruited
And fullest-ripened: these alone they gather
And softly in the baskets lay; and then
Convey them to a sunny spot, made ready
With little mats of woven grass; for here
They must be laid awhile beneath the steady
Streams of the sunshine. But when night draws near,
With other mats they shield them, nor uncover
Till all the dark and dewy hours are over:
So for three days, till the juice turns sweet and heady
From four and twenty hours of sun and air.
Now to the winepress. Now the mounded treasure
Load upon load into the trough is tossed,
But never heaped above the proper measure
Lest something of the scented juice be lost
When, stripped to the thighs, the peasants take their station
And tread the grape to rich annihilation,
While all the rest stand round and laugh with pleasure
To see the foam seethe up as keen as frost.
But when above that pool of bubbling juices
Not one whole cluster shows, with wine-stained legs
Then men step forth, and some unstop the sluices
And catch the gurgling must in wooden kegs
Which soon, close-packed, the rocking mule-cart beareth
Two dusty miles away to white-walled Jerez
Where the great vats, set for their ancient uses,
Sweetened and scoured of former lees and dregs,
Wait in the dark bodega. There unloaded,
The kegs are heaved and emptied one by one
Into the portly vats. So having stowed it
They leave the must to work. Now has begun
That early fermentation musky-scented
And softly-hissing, called “the tumultuous,” ended
After a few brief days, which but foreboded
That slower, stealthier change whose stages run
Beyond Christ’s Birthday to the old year’s ending
And on into the New Year till the first
Or second month, while the slow dregs descending
Leave the wine clear, all cloudy films dispersed.
Thereafter, from its lees drawn off, enduring
Through the long months it waits the slow maturing
Laid up in other vats, till ripe for blending
With older wine, in whose soft flame immersed,
It grows to subtler essence. And that older
Is mixed with older yet, from every vat
A little drawn, till Time, the patient moulder
Of pure perfection, who on Ararat
Watered the vine of Noah, slowly fashion
The pure Solera, daughter of the passion
Of Earth and Sun, and make the gold one golder,
The ripe one riper than that old king who sat
On Israel’s ivory throne, and every nation
Drew near to taste his wisdom. For in wine
Lie wisdom and that fair illumination
That charms the brain to fancies half divine.
Then drink! For, kindling in our crystal rummers,
Wakes the bright Phœnix of a thousand summers
And the great gods stand again, each in his station,
With garlands crowned of the immortal vine.