I taste a liquor never brewed
Emily Dickinson
I taste a liquor never brewed, From tankards scooped in pearl; Not all the vats upon the Rhine Yield such an alcohol! Inebriate of air am I, And debauchee of dew, Reeling, through endless summer days, From inns of molten blue. When landlords turn the drunken bee Out of the foxglove's door, When butterflies renounce their drams, I shall but drink the more! Till seraphs swing their snowy hats, And saints to windows run, To see the little tippler Leaning against the sun!
Of note
This was one of only about ten Dickinson poems printed in her lifetime. It ran unsigned in the Springfield Daily Republican on May 4, 1861, as "The May-Wine." The printed text turned her slant rhyme of "pearl" and "alcohol" into a neat "pearl" and "whirl," and no one knows whether she or the editors made the change.
Poetry Tale: Poetry on the Back of a Cake
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TEXT PROVENANCE · First published 4 May 1861 in the Springfield Daily Republican · Text from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, a Project Gutenberg compilation of the 1890, 1891, and 1896 series.
Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete
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