Spare your censures, worthy friend, on my love of drinking;

Shut your senses, if you please, to the glasses clinking.

Only, while you rest with me, prithee keep your curses

For some other fellow’s wine, other fellow’s verses.

By what frenzy of reproof is your wisdom bitten?

Are the sins that I commit in your volume written?

If I run a tavern score, you don’t pay the reckoning;

If the Lotus-maiden nods, not to you she’s beckoning.

Who shall say behind the Veil which is good and evil?

Who shall say if you or I journey to the devil?

Very varied laws of life you and I are firm on;

Which of us, my friend, is text? which of us is sermon?

Every sober man or drunk seeks his soul’s ideal;

In the tavern and the mosque love alike is real.

Paradise is fair indeed; but this side of heaven

There is joy in noonday sun, joy in shades of even.

Be not boastful of thy worth, for who knows when mounted

To the final judgment-seat how his sum is counted?

Sanctimonious folk like you, filled with moral phrases,

May be sent, to your surprise, packing off to blazes;

While poor rogues like us, who drink ere the vintage fail us,

May be plucked to Paradise from this very alehouse.