Pipe and Pouch Part 1

Pipe and Pouch.

by Various.

PREFACE.

This is an age of anthologies. Collections of poetry covering a wide range of subjects have appeared of late, and seem to have met with favor and approval. Not to the busy man only, but to the student of literature such compilations are of value. It is sometimes objected that they tend to discourage wide reading and original research; but the overwhelming flood of books would seem to make them a necessity.

Unless one has the rare gift of being able to sprint through a book, as Andrew Lang says Mr. Gladstone does, it is surely well to make use of the labors of the industrious compiler. Such collections are often the result of wide reading and patient labor. Frequently the larger part is made up of single poems, the happy and perhaps only inspiration of the writer, gleaned from the poet's corner of the newspaper or the pages of a magazine. This is specially true of the present compilation, the first on the subject aiming at anything like completeness. Brief collections of prose and poetry combined have already been published; but so much of value has been omitted that there seemed to be room for a better book. A vast amount has been written in praise of tobacco, much of it commonplace or lacking in poetic quality. While some of the verse here gathered is an obvious echo, or pa.s.ses into unmistakable parody, it has been the aim of the compiler to maintain, as far as possible, a high standard and include only the best. From the days of Raleigh to the present time, literature abounds in allusions to tobacco. The Elizabethan writers constantly refer to it, often in praise though sometimes in condemnation. The incoming of the "Indian weed" created a great furore, and scarcely any other of the New World discoveries was talked about so much. Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Fletcher, Spenser, Dekker, and many other of the poets and dramatists of the time, make frequent reference to it; and no doubt at the Mermaid tavern, pipes and tobacco found a place beside the sack and ale. Singular to say, Shakespeare makes no reference to it; and only once in his essay "Of Plantations,"

as far as the compiler has been able to discover, does Bacon speak of it. Shakespeare's silence has been explained on the theory that he could not introduce any reference to the newly discovered plant without anachronism; but he did not often let a little thing of this kind stand in his way. It has been suggested, on the other hand, that he avoided all reference to it out of deference to King James I., who wrote the famous "Counterblast." Whichever theory is correct, the fact remains, and it may be an interesting contribution to the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy. Queen Elizabeth never showed any hostility to tobacco; but her successors, James I. and the two Charleses, and Cromwell were its bitter opponents. Notwithstanding its enemies, who just as fiercely opposed the introduction of tea and coffee, its use spread over Europe and the world, and prince and peasant alike yielded to its mild but irresistible sway. Poets and philosophers drew solace and inspiration from the pipe. Milton, Addison, Fielding, Hobbes, and Newton were all smokers. It is said Newton was smoking under a tree in his garden when the historic apple fell. Scott, Campbell, Byron, Hood, and Lamb all smoked, and Carlyle and Tennyson were rarely without a pipe in their mouths. The great novelists, Thackeray, d.i.c.kens, and Bulwer were famous smokers; and so were the great soldiers, Napoleon, Blucher, and Grant. While nearly all the poems here gathered together were written, and perhaps could only have been written, by smokers, several among the best are the work of authors who never use the weed,--one by a man, two or three by women. Among the more recent writers there has been no more devoted smoker than Mr. Lowell, as his recently published letters testify.

Three of the most delightful poems in praise of smoking are his, and with Mr. Aldrich's charming "Latakia" are the gems of the collection.

The compiler desires to express his grateful acknowledgments to friends who have permitted him to use their work and have otherwise aided him from time to time; and to the many unknown authors whose poems are here gathered, and whom it was quite impossible to reach; and to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin, & Company, Harper & Brothers, The Bowen-Merrill Company, and the publishers of "Outlook," for their gracious permission to include copyrighted poems.

J.K.

BOSTON, July, 1894.

PIPE AND POUCH

WITH PIPE AND BOOK.

With Pipe and Book at close of day, Oh, what is sweeter, mortal, say?

It matters not what book on knee, Old Izaak or the Odyssey, It matters not meerschaum or clay.

And though one's eyes will dream astray, And lips forget to sue or sway, It is "enough to merely be,"

With Pipe and Book.

What though our modern skies be gray, As bards aver, I will not pray For "soothing Death" to succor me, But ask this much, O Fate, of thee, A little longer yet to stay With Pipe and Book.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

A POET'S PIPE.

_FROM THE FRENCH OF CHARLES BAUDELAIRE._

A poet's pipe am I, And my Abyssinian tint Is an unmistakable hint That he lays me not often by.

When his soul is with grief o'erworn I smoke like the cottage where They are cooking the evening fare For the laborer's return.

I enfold and cradle his soul In the vapors moving and blue That mount from my fiery mouth; And there is power in my bowl To charm his spirit and soothe, And heal his weariness too.

RICHARD HERNE SHEPHERD.

MY CIGAR.

In spite of my physician, who is, _entre nous_, a fogy, And for every little pleasure has some pathologic bogy, Who will bear with no small vices, and grows dismally prophetic If I wander from the weary way of virtue dietetic;

In spite of dire forewarnings that my brains will all be scattered, My memory extinguished, and my nervous system shattered, That my hand will take to trembling, and my heart begin to flutter, My digestion turn a rebel to my very bread and b.u.t.ter;

As I puff this mild Havana, and its ashes slowly lengthen, I feel my courage gather and my resolution strengthen: I will smoke, and I will praise you, my cigar, and I will light you With tobacco-phobic pamphlets by the learned prigs who fight you!

Let him who has a mistress to her eyebrow write a sonnet, Let the lover of a lily pen a languid ode upon it; In such sentimental subjects I'm a Philistine and cynic, And prefer the inspiration drawn from sources nicotinic.

So I sing of you, dear product of (I trust you are) Havana, And if there's any question as to how my verses scan, a Reason is my shyness in the Muses' aid invoking, As, like other ancient maidens, they perchance object to smoking.

I have learnt with you the wisdom of contemplative quiescence, While the world is in a ferment of unmeaning effervescence, That its jar and rush and riot bring no good one-half so sterling As your fleecy clouds of fragrance that are now about me curling.

So, let stocks go up or downward, and let politicians wrangle, Let the parsons and philosophers grope in a wordy tangle, Let those who want them scramble for their dignities or dollars, Be millionnaires or magnates, or senators or scholars.

I will puff my mild Havana, and I quietly will query, Whether, when the strife is over, and the combatants are weary, Their gains will be more brilliant than its faint expiring flashes, Or more solid than this panful of its dead and sober ashes.

ARTHUR W. GUNDRY.

TO C.F. BRADFORD.

_ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE._

The pipe came safe, and welcome, too, As anything must be from you; A meerschaum pure, 'twould float as light As she the girls called Amphitrite.

Mixture divine of foam and clay, From both it stole the best away: Its foam is such as crowns the glow Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot; Its clay is but congested lymph Jove chose to make some choicer nymph; And here combined,--why, this must be The birth of some enchanted sea, Shaped to immortal form, the type And very Venus of a pipe.

When high I heap it with the weed From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore And cast upon Virginia's sh.o.r.e, I'll think,--So fill the fairer bowl And wise alembic of thy soul, With herbs far-sought that shall distil, Not fumes to slacken thought and will, But bracing essences that nerve To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve.

When curls the smoke in eddies soft, And hangs a shifting dream aloft, That gives and takes, though chance-designed, The impress of the dreamer's mind, I'll think,--So let the vapors bred By pa.s.sion, in the heart or head, Pa.s.s off and upward into s.p.a.ce, Waving farewells of tenderest grace, Remembered in some happier time, To blend their beauty with my rhyme.

While slowly o'er its candid bowl The color deepens (as the soul That burns in mortals leaves its trace Of bale or beauty on the face), I'll think,--So let the essence rare Of years consuming make me fair; So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse, Steep me in some narcotic juice; And if my soul must part with all That whiteness which we greenness call, Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown, And make me beautifully brown!

Dream-forger, I refill thy cup With reverie's wasteful pittance up, And while the fire burns slow away, Hiding itself in ashes gray, I'll think,--As inward Youth retreats, Compelled to spare his wasting heats, When Life's Ash-Wednesday comes about, And my head's gray with fires burnt out, While stays one spark to light the eye, With the last flash of memory, 'Twill leap to welcome C.F.B., Who sent my favorite pipe to me.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

MY PIPE.