Champagne: A Neo-Grec Refrain

This fashionable little poem appeared on the chic pages of Vanity Fair Magazine in 1919; a time when the long shadow of Prohibition was about to spread across the fruited plains of the United States, and from sea to shining sea, the land would be barren until 1933. Soberly, the poet sings “good-bye and farewell” to champagne; pitying all those poor gay blades who must now stroll the boulevards with nothing more potent than lemonade on their collective breathes.