Though giant rains put out the sun,
 Here stand I for a sign.
 Though earth be filled with waters dark,
 My cup is filled with wine.
 Tell to the trembling priests that here
 Under the deluge rod,
 One nameless, tattered, broken man
 Stood up, and drank to God.

 Sun has been where the rain is now,
 Bees in the heat to hum,
 Haply a humming maiden came,
 Now let the deluge come:
 Brown of aureole, green of garb,
 Straight as a golden rod,
 Drink to the throne of thunder now!
 Drink to the wrath of God.

 High in the wreck I held the cup,
 I clutched my rusty sword,
 I cocked my tattered feather
 To the glory of the Lord.
 Not undone were the heaven and earth,
 This hollow world thrown up,
 Before one man had stood up straight,
 And drained it like a cup.

Fascinating how a poem about tea kicked off so bibulous a theme! Speaks volumes about the Minstrels readership, I guess :) Anyway, here’s the next in the series, a guest poem sent in by Flavia :

There must be thousands and thousands of drinking songs, or songs that have been used as such (like the Song of Songs, for instance. Bawdy!), but no list is ever complete without one by Chesterton. You already have archived ‘the Rolling English Road’, but there is also the snarky ‘the Logical Vegetarian’and ‘The Song of Right and Wrong’ and of course the delightful ‘Wine and Water’, which like this is about the Deluge.

Most of them are from the whimsical book ‘the Flying Inn’, about a dastardly plan to wipe out every public house in Great Britain(!), and how it was foiled by a barkeep, a refined poet and a mad Irishman. And the cheese and the barrel of rum, of course. Yay! Dulce ist decipere in loco!

— Flavia

Links

Wikipedia page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton

Several Chesterton works online:

http://www.dur.ac.uk/martin.ward/gkc/books/