The fleecy white clouds that now float in the sky, Form the visions I love most to see; Fairy shapes that I saw in my boyhood's first dreams Seem to beckon me on, while beyond them there gleams A bright future, in waiting for me.
O my brierwood pipe! I ne'er loved thee as now, As that fair form and face steal above; See, she beckons me on to where roses are spread, And she points to my fancy the bright land ahead, Where the winds whisper nothing but love.
Oh, answer, my pipe, shall my dream be as fair When it changes to dreams of the past?
When autumn's chill winds make this leaf look as sere As the leaves on the beech-tree that shelters me here, Will the tree's _heart_ be chilled by the blast?
While musing, around me has gathered a heap Of the leaflets, all dying and dead; And I see in my reverie plainly revealed The slope of life's hill, in my boyhood concealed By the forms that fair fancy had bred.
While I sit on the banks of the beautiful stream, Picking roses that bloom by its side, I know that the shallop will certainly come, When the roses are withered, to carry me home, And that life will go out with the tide.
O my brierwood pipe! may the heart be as light When memory supplanteth the dream; When the sun has gone down may the sunbeam remain, And life's roses, though dead, all their fragrance retain, Till they catch at Eternity's gleam.
ANON.
A BRIEF PUFF OF SMOKE.
Great Doctor Parr, the learned Whig, Ne'er deemed the smoke-cloud _infra dig._, In which you could not see his wig, Involved in clouds of smoke.
Quaint Lamb his wit would oft enshroud In smoke-igniting laughter loud, Like summer thunder in the cloud,-- The lightning in the smoke.
Dean Swift "died at the top;" his head Had drifting clouds when wit had fled: Dull care lurked in his brain, instead Of blowing out in smoke.
And Cowper mild--no smoker he, Bard of the sofa and bohea-- Complained his "dear friend Bull" not free From lowering Stygian smoke.
Clouds in his non-inebriate nob Were doomed the tea tables to rob, Inflicting many a painful throb On one who could not smoke!
Smoke on! it is the steam of life, The smoother of the waves of strife; Where chimneys smoke, or scolds the wife, The counteraction--smoke.
We ride and work and weave by steam, Till ages past seem like a dream In a new world whose dawning beam Is redolent of smoke.
We travel like a comet wild On which some distant sun had smiled, And from his orbit thus beguiled With a long tail of smoke.
The clouds arise from smoking seas, And give, with each conveying breeze, Life to the "weed," and herbs, and trees, Which turn again to smoke.
All nations smoke! Havana's pother Smokes friendly with its Broseley brother: The world's one end puffs to the other, In amicable smoke.
When plague and pestilence go forth, And to diseases dire give birth, Which walk in darkness through the earth, I clothe myself in smoke.
I smoke through desolating years, Tabooed from fever, void of fears, And when some dreaded pest appears, I call in Doctor Smoke.
Go, reader! perfume ladies' hair And scent the ringlets of the fair With eau Cologne and odors rare Aloof from healthy smoke.
Go babble at the ball and rout, And smirk with high-born dames who doubt: Thy flames are quenched, thy fires are out, And sinking into smoke.
"Better," said Johnson, great in name, "It were, when poets droop in fame, To see smoke brighten into flame, Than flames sink into smoke."
SELIM: _Eclectic Magazine_.
A SYMPHONY IN SMOKE.
A pretty, piquant, pouting pet, Who likes to muse and take her ease, She loves to smoke a cigarette;
To dream in silken hammockette, And sing and swing beneath the trees, A pretty, piquant, pouting pet.
Her Christian name is Violet; Her eyes are blue as summer skies; She loves to smoke a cigarette.
As calm as babe in bassinette, She swingeth in the summer breeze, A pretty, piquant, pouting pet.
She ponders o'er a novelette; Her parasol is Japanese; She loves to smoke a cigarette.
She loves a fume without a fret; Her frills are white, her frock _cerise_,-- A pretty, pouting, piquant pet.
She almost goes to sleep, and yet, Half-lulled by booming honey-bees, She loves to smoke a cigarette.
A winsome, clever, cool coquette, Who flouts all Grundian decrees,-- pretty, pouting, piquant pet, That loves to smoke a cigarette.
_Harper's Bazaar_.
IT MAY BE WEEDS.
It may be weeds I've gathered too; But even weeds may be As fragrant as The fairest flower With some sweet memory.
ANON.
SEASONABLE SWEETS.
"_DON'T BE FLOWERY, JACOB._"--CHARLES DICKENS.
When the year is young, what sweets are flung By the violets, hiding, dim, And the lilac that sways her censers high, Whilst the skylark chants a hymn!
How sweet is the scent of the daffodil bloom, When blithe spring decks each spray, And the flowering thorn sheds rare perfume Through the beautiful month of May!
What a dainty pet is the mignonette, Whose sweets wide scattered are!
But sweeter to me than all these yet Is the scent of a prime cigar!