Birds of Passage (Collection)/Catawba Wine

This song of mine Is a Song of the Vine, To be sung by the glowing embers Of wayside inns, When the rain begins To darken the drear Novembers.

It is not a song Of the Scuppernong, From warm Carolinian valleys, Nor the Isabel And the Muscadel That bask in our garden alleys.

Nor the red Mustang, Whose clusters hang O'er the waves of the Colorado, And the fiery flood Of whose purple blood Has a dash of Spanish bravado.

For richest and best Is the wine of the West, That grows by the Beautiful River; Whose sweet perfume Fills all the room With a benison on the giver.

And as hollow trees Are the haunts of bees, For ever going and coming; So this crystal hive Is all alive With a swarming and buzzing and humming.

Very good in its way Is the Verzenay, Or the Sillery soft and creamy; But Catawba wine Has a taste more divine, More dulcet, delicious, and dreamy.

There grows no vine By the haunted Rhine, By Danube or Guadalquivir, Nor on island or cape, That bears such a grape As grows by the Beautiful River.

Drugged is their juice For foreign use, When shipped o'er the reeling Atlantic, To rack our brains With the fever pains, That have driven the Old World frantic.

To the sewers and sinks With all such drinks, And after them tumble the mixer; For a poison malign Is such Borgia wine, Or at best but a Devil's Elixir.

While pure as a spring Is the wine I sing, And to praise it, one needs but name it; For Catawba wine Has need of no sign, No tavern-bush to proclaim it.

And this Song of the Vine, This greeting of mine, The winds and the birds shall deliver To the Queen of the West, In her garlands dressed, On the banks of the Beautiful River.