Truly, I grow aged. I have no longer much delight in wine.
But then, no wine ever much rejoiced me save that of Italy. Wine-drinking
in England is, after all, only make-believe, a mere playing with an
exotic inspiration. Tennyson had his port, whereto clings a good old
tradition; sherris sack belongs to a nobler age; these drinks are not for
us. Let him who will, toy with dubious Bordeaux or Burgundy; to get good
of them, soul's good, you must be on the green side of thirty. Once or
twice they have plucked me from despair; I would not speak unkindly of
anything in cask or bottle which bears the great name of wine. But for
me it is a thing of days gone by. Never again shall I know the mellow
hour _cum regnat rosa, cum madent capilli_. Yet how it lives in memory!
"What call you this wine?" I asked of the temple-guardian at Paestum,
when he ministered to my thirst. "_Vino di Calabria_," he answered, and
what a glow in the name! There I drank it, seated against the column of
Poseidon's temple. There I drank it, my feet resting on acanthus, my
eyes wandering from sea to mountain, or peering at little shells niched
in the crumbling surface of the sacred stone. The autumn day declined; a
breeze of evening whispered about the forsaken shore; on the far summit
lay a long, still cloud, and its hue was that of my Calabrian wine.
How many such moments come back to me as my thoughts wander! Dim little
_trattorie_ in city byways, inns smelling of the sun in forgotten
valleys, on the mountain side, or by the tideless shore, where the grape
has given me of its blood, and made life a rapture. Who but the veriest
fanatic of teetotalism would grudge me those hours so gloriously
redeemed? No draught of wine amid the old tombs under the violet sky but
made me for the time a better man, larger of brain, more courageous, more
gentle. 'Twas a revelry whereon came no repentance. Could I but live
for ever in thoughts and feelings such as those born to me in the shadow
of the Italian vine! There I listened to the sacred poets; there I
walked with the wise of old; there did the gods reveal to me the secret
of their eternal calm. I hear the red rillet as it flows into the rustic
glass; I see the purple light upon the hills. Fill to me again, thou of
the Roman visage and all but Roman speech! Is not yonder the long
gleaming of the Appian Way? Chant in the old measure, the song
imperishable
"dum Capitolium
Scandet cum tacita virgine pontifex--"
aye, and for how many an age when Pontiff and Vestal sleep in the eternal
silence. Let the slave of the iron gods chatter what he will; for him
flows no Falernian, for him the Muses have no smile, no melody. Ere the
sun set, and the darkness fall about us, fill again!