|
|
||
|
Beer |
||
|
|
||
|
(Wine, water, tempered p'raps with Attic salt)—
And not invent at once that mild luxurious, And artful beverage, Beer. How the digestion Got on without it, is a startling question.
Had they digestions ? And an actual body Such as dyspepsia might make attacks on ?
Were they abstract ideas—(Like Tom Noddy And Mr. Briggs)—or men like Jones and Jackson ?
Then Nectar—was that beer or whisky-toddy ? Some say the Gaelic mixture, / the Saxon :
I think a strict adherence to the latter
Might make some Scots less pig-headed, and fatter.
Besides, Bon Gaultier definitely shows That the real beverage for feasting gods on
Is a soft compound, grateful to the nose And also to the palate, known as " Hodgson."
I know a man—a tailor's son—who rose
To be a peer : and this I would lay odds on
(Though in his Memoirs it may not appear)
That that man owed his rise to copious Beer.
Oh Beer ! Oh Hodgson, Guinness, Allsopp, Bass!
Names that should be on every infant's tongue ! Shall days and months and years and centuries pass,
And still your merits be unrecked, unsung ? Oh ! I have looked into my foaming glass,
And wished that lyre could yet again be strung Which once rang prophet-like through Greece, and tau
her Misguided sons that " the best drink was water."
111 |
||
|
|
||