Or a language to my mind
  (Still the phrase is wide or scant),
  To take leave of thee, Great Plant! 
  Or in any terms relate
  Half my love, or half my hate: 
  For I hate yet love thee so,
  That, whichever thing I show,
  The plain truth will seem to be
  A constrained hyperbole,
  And the passions to proceed
  More from a mistress than a weed.

  Sooty retainer to the vine,
  Bacchus’ black servant, negro fine;
  Sorcerer, that mak’st us dote upon
  Thy begrimed complexion,
  And, for thy pernicious sake,
  More and greater oaths to break
  Than reclaimed lovers take
  ’Gainst women:  thou thy siege dost lay
  Much too in the female way,
  While thou suck’st the lab’ring breath
  Faster than kisses or than death.

  Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
  That our worst foes cannot find us,
  And ill fortune, that would thwart us,
  Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;
  While each man, through thy heightening steam,
  Does like a smoking Etna seem,
  And all about us does express
  (Fancy and wit in richest dress)
  A Sicilian fruitfulness

  Thou through such a mist dost show us,
  That our best friends do not know us,
  And, for those allowed features,
  Due to reasonable creatures,
  Liken’st us to fell Chimeras—­
  Monsters that, who see us, fear us;
  Worse than Cerberus or Geryon,
  Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion.

  Bacchus we know, and we allow
  His tipsy rites.  But what art thou,
  That but by reflex canst show
  What his deity can do,
  As the false Egyptian spell
  Aped the true Hebrew miracle? 
  Some few vapours thou may’st raise,
  The weak brain may serve to amaze. 
  But to the reins and nobler heart
  Canst nor life nor heat impart.

  Brother of Bacchus, later born,
  The old world was sure forlorn
  Wanting thee, that aidest more
  The god’s victories than before
  All his panthers, and the brawls
  Of his piping Bacchanals. 
  These, as stale, we disallow,
  Or judge of thee meant:  only thou
  His true Indian conquest art;
  And, for ivy round his dart,
  The reformed god now weaves
  A finer thyrsus of thy leaves.

  Scent to match thy rich perfume
  Chemic art did ne’er presume
  Through her quaint alembic strain,
  None so sovereign to the brain. 
  Nature, that did in thee excel,
  Framed again no second smell. 
  Roses, violets, but toys
  For the smaller sort of boys,
  Or for greener damsels meant;
  Thou art the only manly scent.