The American Vintagers' Song

THE Vine, the Vine! the glorious Vine
That binds the beaming brow of Mirth,
That sanctifies the solemn shrine,
And blushes o’er the joyous Earth,
Unwrinkled still amid the years,
And laughing with the laughing spheres!

Why seek for nectar o’er the sea I
Why fill the bowl from sceptred lands?
The juice may waken revelry,
But it is poured by trembling hands:
That thought alone, in festal hours,
Should cast a shade o’er Pleasure’s bowers.

Then look on your own mighty hills,
And ye must see them nobly pine,
Beside their silver-throated rills,
To bear the Vine, the Freeman’s Vine,
Whose blood shall only fill the bowl
That beams for an unfettered soul.

No castled crag shall coldly tower
Above the vineyard laughing here;
No eyes that to a sceptre cower,
Upon the tendrils shed a tear;
Nor shall a single drop of wine
For tyrants and their minions shine!

The leaves would shrink beneath their touch,
The hills would shudder at the tread,
The proud, the pompous tread, of such,
And in their cerements stir the Dead—
The patriot Dead whose valor gave
These hills to all except the slave.

Then fill, fill high the beaming bowl,
Whose sides the scenes of battles bear
Where Freedom, with exulting soul,
Looks on the Despot’s dark despair:
Here Warren waves his cheering hand,
There Stewart leads his ocean band.

Fill high, fill high! for now we drink
Of Freedom’s wine to Freedom’s chief,
Who gave, on Danger’s darkest brink,
His Country Triumph’s greenest leaf:
See how the wine beneath this sun
Leaps at the name of Washington!

Yet fill again! Fill high again!
Unto the Grandest dunk we now—
That Heroes have not died in vain,
But hallow yet our Country’s brow—
While Union, like a golden Fate,
Binds heart to heart and State to State.

0 glorious thought! 0 Vision blest!
Fill! Freemen, every goblet fill!
And roll with every heaving breast
A sea of song from bill to bill,
Whose vines spring from’ chainless sod,
Awed only by the stop of God!