AN AMERICAN PARODY OF WORDSWORTH'S "SONNET ON THE SONNET."

SCORN not the meerschaum. Housewives, you have croaked

In ignorance of its charms. Through this small reed Did Milton, now and then, consume the weed;

The poet Tennyson hath oft evoked

The Muse with glowing pipe, and Thackeray joked
And wrote and sang in nicotinian mood;
Hawthorne with this hath cheered his solitude;
A thousand times this pipe hath Lowell smoked;
Full oft hath Aldrich, Stoddard, Taylor, Cranch,
And many more whose verses float about,
Puffed the Virginian or Havanna leaf;
And when the poet's or the artist's branch,
Drops no sustaining fruit, how sweet to pout
Consolatory whiffs-alas, too brief!

My Hookah.

And rouses without irritation?

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My pipe, love!

Tobacco !

Far kinder than the kindest friend,
O, teach us how your powers blend!
And from your heavenly throne descend,

Tobacco !
E. H. S.

From Cope's Tobacco Plant. April, 1873.

I look upon the fair blue skies,

And naught but empty air I see; But when thy circling cloudlets rise,

It seemeth unto me

Ten thousand angels spread their wings,
Within those little azure rings.

Tobacco hath the choicest leaf

That ever western breeze hath fanned; Its healing odour gives relief

To men of ev'ry land.

This precious herb to me doth yield
More joy than all the broider'd field.

O, comrade! there be many things
That seem right fair in truth or joke;
But sure from none among them springs
A richer charm than smoke.
Let us not puff our pipes alone,

But join two altars both in one.

From Cope's Tobacco Plant. December, 1871.

T'WAS the voice of the doctor, I heard him declare,
"You've been smoking too much, of tobacco beware!
To be candid and plain you'll find it no joke,
For you'll become ashes yourself if you smoke.”

So I've filled my last pipe as I sit by the fire,
And gaze at the cloud rising higher and higher,
And languidly watching each up-curling ring,
A mournful adieu to tobacco I sing.

Farewell, good cigars, I will e'en call you dear,
Yet your price were no object so you were still here.
Good bye! Latakia, Mild Turkey, good by !
Virginia, Cavendish, Bristol Bird's-eye,

And my pipe! My sweet pipe, with thy cool amber tip!
No more shall that amber caress my fond lip.
Oh! friend of my youth! must thou really go-
My partner in joy, and my solace in woe?

'Tis too true; nought avail me these heart-broken sighs!
And, alas! thou art out. There are tears in my eyes,
As I lay thee down gently. I will not complain,
But I feel I shall never be happy again.

Fun, 1870.

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THE PIPE.

A Parody of Barry Cornwall's "The Sea, the Sea !"

THE pipe, the pipe, the German pipe !
The short, the long, the meerschaum ripe!
Its odorous puffs without a sound,
They float my head's wide regions round;
They rise in clouds and mock the skies,
While Baccy snugly cradled lies.
My hookah wide! my hookah deep!
I've that which I would ever keep;
With the smoke above, and smoke below,
And smoke wheresoe'er I go.

If a storm (like a Chinese gong) should ring
What matters that? I'll smoke and sing.
What matters, &c.

I love-oh! how I love to smoke,
And drink full bumpers of th' foaming soak!
And when its waves have drowned my soul,
I'll whistle aloud such a "Tol-de-rol!
Don't ask me where the world is going,
Nor why the sou'-west blast is blowing.
I never breathed the dull tame air,
But I relish my great pipe mair and mair,
And back again flew for a soothing puff,
Like a bird-I'm sure that's quick enough.
My mother it is, and I'll prove it to ye,
(Much more of a mother than the open sea!)
For smoking, I'm at it ever and ever!

I hope your comment on this line is "clever!"
For fear of growing at all lackadaisical

I hasten to lay down my pen parody-sical;

In truth these stanzas concluding with somewhat

'Bout "birth" and "death," which things I can't come

I've only one word, and that's to crave pardon,

These sweet pretty verses that I've been so hard on.

From The Individual. Cambridge, January 31, 1837.

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A DREAM (ANTI-CIPATED.).

(After Kingsley.)

THREE Antis* went groaning out into the east

Out into the east, as the sun arose ;

Each thought on the newspaper he loved the least;
The Tobacco Plant followed, and chaff'd at their woes.
But antis will croak, and smokers will smoke,
Tho' chaff it be sudden, and endless the joke
That the antis afford with their moaning.

The Plant having stopped in a garden bower,
Lit up his sweet pipe, as the sun arose ;

And he heard those three antis bawl out by the hour
The weakest of humbug, in seedy old clothes.
But antis will croak, and the Plant have his joke,
And chaff, if ignited, must all end in smoke,

And the antis must soon end their moaning.
Three antis lay drunk on the shining sands,
In the morning gleam, as the sun arose ;
And smokers are laughing and rubbing their hands,
To know they're already relieved of their foes.
For Observers will talk, and the Plant doesn't sleep;
Though tough be the job, 'tis amusing to keep
All the anti-Tobaccoites moaning.
From Cope's Tobacco Plant. January, 1875.

*Antis i.e., Anti-smokers.

The Song of Firewater, a parody of Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha," appeared in Cope's Tobacco Plant for November, 1871. The poem relates to snuff, but as it extends to over 200 lines it cannot be inserted here. commences thus :

SHOULD you ask me whence this story?
Whence this legend and tradition ?

I should answer, I should tell you,
From the lips of Blow-me-tite-o;
Blow-me-tite-o, sweetest singer,
Singer of the mournful ditties.

THE SONG OF NICOTINE.

SHOULD YOU ask me why this meerschaum,
Why these clay-pipes and churchwardens,
With the odours of tobacco,
With the oil and fume of "mixture,"
With the curling smoke of "bird's eye,"
With the gurgling of rank juices,
With renewed expectorations

It

As of sickness on the fore-deck?

I should answer, I should tell you,
From the cabbage, and the dust-heaps,
From the old leeks of the Welshland,
From the soil of kitchen gardens,
From the mud of London sewers,
From the garden-plots and churchyards,
Where the linnet and cock-sparrow
Feed upon the weeds and groundsel,
I receive them as I buy them
From the boxes of Havana,

The concoctor, the weird wizard.

Should you ask how this Havana
Made cigars so strong and soothing,
Made the "bird's eye," and "York-river,"
I should answer, I should tell you,

In the purlieus of the cities,

In the cellars of the warehouse,
In the dampness of the dungeon,
Lie the rotten weeds that serve him ;
In the gutters and the sewers,
In the melancholy alleys,
Half-clad Arab boys collect them,
Crossing-sweepers bring them to him,
Costermongers keep them for him,
And he turns them by his magic
Into "cavendish" and "bird's-eye,"
For those clay-pipes and churchwardens,
For this meerschaum, or he folds them,
And "cigars" he duly labels

On the box in which he sells them.

From Figaro. October 7, 1874.

LINES TO THE "ANTI-TOBACCO JOURNAL,"

TELL me not in penny numbers

Smoking's but a loathsome dream; Worse than onions and cucumbers, Though they be chawed up like steam!

Smoke is sweetness, done in earnest,
Power possessing to console,

If 'tis healthy weed thou burnest
In the clay or meerschaum bowl.

Not to aid expectoration

Doth the smoker burn the weed, But to woo sweet meditation,

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And also digest his "feed."

Shag" is strong, "Returns" is milder,
"Cavendish" but suits the brave;
Though our pulses beat the wilder,
Still for 'bacca do we crave.

In this world so full of brawling,
If in years your manhood's ripe,
Heed ye not the antis' calling-

Be a man and smoke a pipe.
Pipes of great men all remind us
(Tho' of clay the bowl and stem),
Wheresoever fate may find us,

We can colour pipes like them.

Dhudeens, that perhaps another

On the wheel of fortune broke, Some forlorn and bankrupt brother, Seeing, may take heart, and smoke.