Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only
question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time
weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be
drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as
you will. But be drunken.
And it sometimes, on the stairs of a palace, or on the green
side of a ditch, or in the dreary solitude of your own room,
you should awaken and the drunkenness be half or wholly slipped
away from you, ask of the wind, or of the wave, or of the star,
or of the bird, or of the clock, of whatever flies, or sighs,
or rocks, or sings, or speaks, ask what hour it is; and the
wind, wave, star, bird, clock, will answer you: "It is the hour
to be drunken! Be drunken, if you would not be martyred slaves
of Time; be drunken continually! With wine, with poetry, or
with virtue, as you will."