"Terrence, this is stupid stuff" by A.E. Housman

The first stanza tells the story of a man who has killed his friends and anything else that listens to his poetry.  The second stanza begins with the description of several different types of alcohol and finishes with the description of a drunk night complete with waking up in an unknown location and not knowing what happened.  The third stanza is about a salesman trying to sell liquor to some people. The poem concludes with the story of a King where people try to poison him but end up poisoning themselves for some reason that I am not sure of.  The King was Mithridate who had built up an immunity to poisons throughout his lifetime by taking less lethal doses of several poisons.  Alcohol is definitely a common theme throughout these seemingly unrelated tales.  The speaker seems to think that alcohol is something positive because he never speaks of the evil that is associated with alcohol.  In the second stanza, he says that "malt does more than Milton can" which implies that alcohol can make men do great things.