Pleasure

Drinking alcohol is often thought to increase pleasure, and it certainly has that effect on the speaker of this poem. In the fifth stanza, Li Po speaks of singing and dancing as the alcohol takes its effect. On the other hand, the following stanza introduces the bittersweet pathos of drinking, telling readers that the speaker is happy when he is sober and that he loses his friends as he drinks. The poem's praise of wine as a source of pleasure is mixed up with the poet's pleasure with the companionship that he finds from the moon and his own shadow. Later, the benefit of wine is not its ability to give pleasure at all, but its ability to let a person see the world more clearly. As a philosopher and poet, Li Po finds his greatest pleasure in contemplating the world around him and understanding what it means...