"The Literary World: A Fortnightly Review of Current Literature." Volume XI, January-December, 1880, p.160.
Revelry in IndiaIt's probably most familiar to modern folks from it's appearance in the 1931 "Dracula".
by Alfred Domett
(with a biographical sketch of the author)
We reprint this wild and powerful lyric...in a good text, as the common ones have some sad errors...
We meet 'neath the sounding rafter
And the walls around are bare;
As they shout to our peals of laughter,
It seems that the dead are there.
But stand to your glasses, steady!
We drink to our comrades' eyes;
Quaff a cup to the dead already;
And hurra! for the next that dies.
Not here are the goblets glowing;
Not here is the vintage sweet;
'Tis cold, as our hearts are growing,
And dark, as the doom we meet.
But stand to your glasses, steady!
And moon shall our pulses rise.
A cup to the dead already;
Hurra! for the next that dies.
Not a sigh for the lot that darkles,
Not a tear for the friends that sink;
We'll fall, 'mid the wine cup's sparkles,
As mute as the wine we drink.
so stand to your glasses, steady!
'Tis this that the respite buys.
One cup to the dead already;
Hurra! for the next that dies.
Time was when we frowned at others--
We thought we were wiser then;
Ha! ha! let them think of their mothers
Who hope to see them again!
No! stand to your glasses, steady!
The thoughtless are here the wise;
A cup to the dead already;
Hurra! for the next that dies.
There's many a hand that's shaking;
There's many a cheek that's sunk;
But soon, though our hearts are breaking,
They'd burn with the wine we've drunk.
So stand to your glasses, steady;
'Tis here the revival lies;
A cup to the dead already;
Hurra! for the next that dies.
There's a mist on the glass congealing--
'Tis the hurricane's fiery breath;
And thus does the warmth of feeling
Turn ice in the grasp of death.
Ho! stand to your glasses steady!
For a moment the vapor dies.
A cup to the dead already;
Hurra! for the next that dies.
Who dreads to the dust returning?
Who shrinks from the sable shore?--
Where the high and haughty yearning
Of the soul shall sting no more!
No! stand to your glasses, steady!
The world is a world of lies,
A cup to the dead already;
Hurra! for the next that dies.
Cut off from the land that bore us,
Betrayed by the land we find,
Where the brightest have gone before us,
And the dullest remain behind,
Stand! stand to your glasses steady!
'Tis all we have left to prize.
A cup to the dead already;
And hurra! for the next that dies.
...For twenty-five years, or thereabouts, it has been a favorite poem with the newspapers of America. It was written in India, during a season of cholera, and may have appeared first in the St. Helena Magazine, though we do not know that it did. ...[Alfred Domett] is of a Dorsetshire family, studied at Cambridge, read law, and was called to the bar in 1841, but never practiced.
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