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 butter;
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.
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