WINE IS BOTTLED POETRY
by Carole W
So said Robert Louis Stevenson, many years ago. I took his words to heart. I took them to the wine store, too, buying bottles more by the labels – for the scenes and chapters in my Catherine and Vincent imaginings they conjured – than by any anticipated taste. These labels tell me a story of wine and roses, of love triumphant ... and rather breathless.
I hope you'll hear one, too.
Three cups open the grand door to bliss;
Take a jugful, the universe is yours.
Such is the rapture of the wine
Li Bai, Wine: A Vindication
Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That’s all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.
William Butler Yeats, A Drinking Song
Wine stirs the spring,
joy grows like a plant,
walls, large rocks fall,
abysses close up, song is born.
Oh thou, jug of wine, in the desert
with the woman I love ...
Pablo Neruda, Ode to Wine
All the pictures that hung in my memory before I knew you have faded
and given place to our radiant moments together.
Now I cannot live apart from you ...
Your words are my food, your breath my wine.
You are everything to me.
Sarah Bernhardt, letters to Victorien Sardou
Let us celebrate the occasion with wine and sweet words.
Plautus, Asinaria 835
I have drunken deep of joy,
And I will taste no other wine tonight.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci, Act 1 Scene iii
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