Beer, by George Arnold (1834 – 1865)
HERE,
With my beer
I sit,
While golden moments flit:
Alas!
They pass
Unheeded by:
And, as they fly,
I,
Being dry,
Sit, idly sipping here
My beer.
...
Go, whining youth,
Forsooth!
Go, weep and wail,
Sigh and grow pale,
Weave melancholy rhymes
On the old times,
Whose joys like shadowy ghosts appear,
But leave me to my beer!
Gold is dross,—
Love is loss,—
So, if I gulp my sorrows down,
Or see them drown
In foamy draughts of old nut-brown,
Then I do wear the crown,
Without the cross!
(http://allpoetry.com/poem/8553329-Beer-by-George-Arnold, http://brookstonbeerbulletin.com/beer-poetry/#Arnold)
His most enduring work is a humorous piece, The Jolly Old Pedagogue (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Arnold_(poet)).
Pfaff's beer cellar
Pfaff's was a drinking establishment in Manhattan, New York City, known for its literary and artistic clientele.
Opened in 1855 by Charles Ignatious Pfaff, the original Pfaff’s was modeled after the German Rathskellers that were popular in Europe at the time. Charles Pfaff's beer cellar was located on Broadway near Bleecker Street (before 1862, Pfaff's address was given as 647 Broadway; after 1865, its location was advertised as 653 Broadway) in Greenwich Village, New York City. To enter the beer cellar—which was actually a vaulted ceiling bar and restaurant—its patrons had to go down a set of stairs.
From the mid-1850s to the late 1860s, Pfaff’s was the center of New York’s revolutionary culture. As writer Allan Gurganus has said, "Pfaff’s was the Andy Warhol factory, the Studio 54, the Algonquin Round Table all rolled into one." ...Whitman also wrote an unfinished poem about Pfaff’s called "The Two Vaults," which included the lines:
...The vault at Pfaffs where the drinkers and laughers meet to eat and drink and carouse
While on the walk immediately overhead pass the myriad feet of Broadway...
Writer Fitz James O'Brien also wrote an ode to Pfaff's and to the clientele; an annotated copy of these lyrics titled At Pfaff's was pasted by Thomas Butler Gunn into his 1860 diary....
The original location at 653 Broadway eventually became an envelope factory. In 1975, it became a disco called Infinity, which was destroyed by fire in 1979. Today, the location is home to a few shops. In the spring of 2011, the Vault at Pfaff’s was re-established at 643 Broadway. Like in the original, today's patrons descend a set of stairs into a refurbished cellar
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfaff%27s_beer_cellar).