I Taste a Liquor Never Brewed

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!

First print Life XX
Johnson 214 | Franklin 207

■→IN POLISH

Text compared with the fascicle and published as in the first print by Mabel Loomis Todd and Thomas Wentworth Higginson; does not require adjustment, public domain worldwide, no rights reserved.

■→Poems, first print by Higginson and Todd, page 34;

■Notes for Emily Dickinson’s poetry;
Poems one-by-one print and fascicle comparison,
■Resource for Emily Dickinson’s poetry;
■Google Drive, manuscript fascicles.

Feel welcome to compare:  

 For he shall not think much on the days of his life, for God occupieth his heart with delights, ■Wycliffe, Ecclesiastes 5.

The book of Ecclesiastes, or the Preacher, is also ascribed to Solomon, and that with much reason, if not with truth. It is written as the solitary reflections of a worn-out debauchee, such as Solomon was, who looking back on scenes he can no longer enjoy, cries out All is Vanity! — Thomas Paine, ■The Age of Reason.