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.
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