Song of the Two Cupbearers
First Cupbearer
Drink of this cup—Osiris sips
The same in his halls below;
And the same he gives, to cool the lips
Of the dead, who downward go.
Drink of this cup—the water within
Is fresh from Lethe’s stream;
’Twill make the past, with all its sin,
And all its pain and sorrows, seem
Like a long forgotten dream;
The pleasure, whose charms
Are steeped in woe;
The knowledge, that harms
The soul to know;
The hope, that bright
As the lake of the waste,
Allures the sight
And mocks the taste;
The love, that binds
Its innocent wreath,
Where the serpent winds
In venom beneath!—
All that of evil or false, by thee
Hath ever been known or seen,
Shalt melt away in this cup, and be
Forgot as it never had been!
Second Cupbearer
Drink of this cup—when Isis led
Her boy of old to the beaming sky,
She mingled a draught divine and said.—
“Drink of this cup, thou’lt never die!”
Thus do I say and sing to thee.
Heir of that boundless heaven on high,
Though frail and fallen and lost thou be,
“Drink of this cup, thou’lt never die!”
And Memory, too, with her dreams shall come,
Dreams of a former, happier day,
When heaven was still the spirit’s home,
And her wings had not yet fallen away.
Glimpses of glory ne’er forgot,
That tell, like gleams on a sunset sea,
What once hath been, what now is not.
But oh! what again shall brightly be!”