[A. E. Stallings]

A nice, if dark, one by Robert Graves:


Ancestors

My New Year's drink is mulled to-night
And hot sweet vapours roofward twine.
The shades cry Gloria! with delight
As down they troop to taste old wine.

They crowd about the crackling fire,
Impatient as the rites begin;
Mulled porto is their souls' desire--
Porto well aged with nutmeg in.

'Ha,' cries the first, 'my Alma wine
Of one-and-seventy years ago!'
The second cheers 'God bless the vine!'
The third and fourth like cockerels crow:

They crow and clap their arms for wings,
They have small pride or breeding left--
Two grey-beards, a tall youth who sings,
A soldier with his cheek-bone cleft.

O Gloria! for each ghostly shape,
That whiffled like a candle smoke,
Now fixed and ruddy with the grape
And mirrored at the polished oak.

I watch their brightening boastful eyes,
I hear the toast their glasses clink:
'May this young man in drink grown wise
Die, as we also died, in drink!'

Their reedy voices I abhor,
I am alive at least, and young.
I dash their swill upon the floor:
Let them lap grovelling, tongue to tongue.