I would to heaven that I were so much clay,
As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling -
Because at least the past were passed away -
And for the future - (but I write this reeling,
Having got drunk exceedingly today,
So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling)
I say - the future is a serious matter -
And so - for God's sake - hock and soda water!
Hock  is a sort of German white wine that was often mixed with soda water. 
 Byron, good sybarite that he is, elsewhere claims that becoming intoxicated (on wine, women, glory, wealth) is one of the finest things in life, perhaps a good way to forget, through a heightened state of immediacy, the existential burdens of being a rational creature, conscious of its ultimate end. Although it is rather long, for collation, a passage from  Don Juan   Canto 2 , is worth quoting in part: 
 
 Few things surpass old wine; and they may preach Who please,—the more because they preach in vain,— Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, Sermons and soda-water the day after. 
 Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; The best of life is but intoxication: Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk The hopes of all men, and of every nation; Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk Of life’s strange tree, so fruitful on occasion: But to return,—Get very drunk; and when You wake with headache, you shall see what then. 
 Ring for your valet—bid him quickly bring 
 Some hock and soda-water ,  then you ’ll know A pleasure worthy Xerxes the great king;… 
 
 ( stanzas  178-180, emphasis added)
Headpiece to Don Juan I would to Heaven