Cup Of Youth Poem by Emmanuel George Cefai

Let us this night
Take up
The cup of youth
Raise it high
High to the heavens
Favorable and beaming
Skies:
And the sweet moon
On looking smilingly

For in our youth
Our years are little
And in youth
The hopes of further
Years spring
As from the seeds
The trees
As from the buds
The flowers.

We here are in youth
And
In youth our bodies
Young
Keen to reproduce
Therefore
Bring the wine
Around
The willing damsels
Smile
Shoot arrows from
Each eye.

Anon, anon the
Night
Passes:
We know
We know
But still young
Let us the few hours
That past mid night remain
Enjoy and high
Our glasses raise
And drink.

In Youth more to be
Allowed than when
The roasted body
Sinks with crumpling
Age and wrinkled lines
Therefore let us together
Celebrate:
Not stop, continue
Till the sign of Dawn
Drive us silent
From this happy place.

Green is the lawn
Not dark
For under the moon’s light
It beams
Glistens
Under the fierce star-light
And
The sweet presence of
The nightingales.

Ay song and wine
And beauty!
Girls your time too
Be come:
Made to reproduce
Your time be come
To do the noble task
Becoming mothers
Perpetuate our race
Into the further generations
When
Our ancient bodies fall
Into the dug-up ground
With lessened trace.

Lo! The stars, the moon,
King Night himself
Be all favorable
And Cupid with his darts
Waits little behind.


And therefore
Let us this night
Take up
The cup of youth
Raise it high
High to the heavens
Favorable and beaming
Skies:
And the sweet moon
On looking smilingly