Ode to Daniel

Some sleeping beauties are so soundly a-drowse
They cannot be stirred, they cannot awake.
Such potentials lost in narcotic hazes,
Such empathies and kind country manners
Buried beneath their shatterproof stupors;
Such hayseed charms and buoyant outlooks
Trapped under shaly, crapulent layers
Of pious obeisance to Mr. Boston,
Tito, Jimmy Beam, and Commissar Smirnoff.
I tried shaking him into more sensible states
Without sentiment, romance, or other goads,
But he smiled a dopey smile and retreated
To a Lethean trench forty fathoms deep.
The heftiest hammer cannot break
The enchanted chains that enslave him.