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All drinking

plays a post more frivolous and light (I hope), after the dramatic entry over fear. The ancient Greeks also had what might be called "Songs of drunks" (as our "Wine Assumption selling ..."): ie ditties to be recited in the context of banquets and meetings of drinkers. The following little poem belongs to the collection of Anacreontics . This collection is a compilation of themed banquet later poems, not being of Anacreon, were composed in the style and theme of the Greek lyric poet, and were attached to his name:

Ἡ γῆ μέλαινα πίνει,
πίνει δένδρεα δ 'αὖ γῆν
πίνει θάλασσ' ἀναύρους,
son d sun thάlassan,
son d sun the moon;
me: What mάchesth 'partners,
kaftoi thέlonti pίnein;
( Anacreónticas 21)

La negra tierra bebe,
los árboles beben la tierra,
el mar bebe las fuentes,
y al sol, la luna.
¿Porque lucháis, compañeros, conmigo,
also want to drink?

In Spain, two poets cultivated especially gender anacreontic by free translations or adaptations of Greek poems: Esteban Manuel de Villegas (1589-1699) in the seventeenth century, and Juan Meléndez Valdés in the eighteenth. The first composed a graceful and concise adaptation of the song above:

Monostrofe 20

drink Del Bebe


fertile land and land plants, water
the winds, the suns
water,
moons and suns and stars
clear. Then why

drink vedáis me, comrades?

The Greek also has known little poem numerous imitations in English poetry. For example, it's Charles Cotton (1630-1687), published in 1689 (which is far more verbose than Villegas):

Paraphras'd from Anacreon

The Earth with swallowing drunken showers
Reels a perpetual round, With their healths
And the Trees and Flowers
drink up the Ground Again.

The Sea, full of Liquor spuing,
The ambient Air doth sup, And thirsty
Phoebus at a pull,
Quaffs off the Ocean's cup. When

stagg'ring to a resting place,
His bus'ness Being done,
The Moon, with her pale face platters, and drinks up
Comes the Sun. Since

Elements and Planets Then Drinks
an eternal round,
'Tis sure much more for men
Proper Have Better Liquor found. Why I May Not
Then, pray tell me, Drink and Be
drunk as well as They?

In addition, the following poem of Shelley , is not about drinking, but about love, but uses the same procedure rhetorical and argumentative of Anacreontic Greek:

Love's Philosophy

The Fountains
mingle with the river And the rivers with the ocean,
The winds of heaven mix
for ever With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single,
All things by a law divine In one
Another's Being
mingle-Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven, And the waves clasp
One Another;
No sister-flower Would Be forgiven If it disdain'd STI
brother;
And the sunlight clasps the earth, And the moonbeams kiss
the sea- What Are All These
kissings worth, If thou kiss
not me?

And, for that matter to trace the rhetoric of these poems, flamenco song "The Night They Blew Up The Moon," Bacilos group, we see the same mode of argument on couple of stanzas:

If men have reached the moon, from Sevilla
if I can talk to someone in New York,
if the medicine cures what was certain death,
tell me why it is not possible our love.

If the beautiful with a kiss the beast became a heartthrob,
if the flowers wilt and later returns to sprout, grandparents
if you want,
and his love is all you have, tell me
Why do not we'll try.

Technorati tags: Anacreon , Shelley , Anacreontea , Charles Cotton , Esteban Manuel de Villegas , poetry, drinking , love, love poetry , Classical Tradition