Amy Lowell’s speaker imagines making a wild, impossible wine. She plucks stars from the sky—some sharp with colored light, some cool and green—squeezes them into a silver cup, and stirs in the cold scorn of a beloved, which chills the drink like ice. Swallowing it is painful and intoxicating at once: it scratches the throat, burns in the belly like a snake of fire, then rises to the head with heat and laughter. The mood is feverish, bitter, and defiant, mixing beauty with cruelty. By the end, the speaker wants to be so transformed by this drink that she can forget she has ever known a woman—whether that means a female lover, or a part of herself, the line adds a sharp, haunted edge. It feels like drinking pain until it becomes power.
Vintage — Summary
I will mix me a drink of stars,-- Large stars with polychrome needles, Small stars jetting maroon and crimson, Cool, quiet, green stars. I will tear them out of the sky, And squeeze them over an old silver cup, And I will pour the cold scorn of my Beloved into it, So that my drink shall be bubbled with ice.
It will lap and scratch As I swallow it down; And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire, Coiling and twisting in my belly. His snortings will rise to my head, And I shall be hot, and laugh, Forgetting that I have ever known a woman.