Come, thou monarch of the vine,
Plumpy Bacchus with pink eyne[1]
In thy fats our cares be drown’d,
With thy grapes our hairs be crown’d!
Cup us till the world go round,
Cup us till the world go round!
[1] Pink eyne are small eyes. “Some have mighty yies and some be pinkyied. Quidam pergrandis sunt luminibus, quidam peti.” Hormaris Vulgaria, 1519. The flower called a pink is in French osillet, or little eye. To pink and wink is to contract the eyes and peep out of the lids. Hence pinky for tipsy, from the peculiar expression of the eyes of persons in liquor. The epithet is therefore well appropriated to the God of wine. — Fats, in the next line, is an old form of vats; the name of the cisterns or large vessels in which new-made wine is kept.
