Ah, happy days, when the old Chapel House,
Of the old Forest Chapel, rang with mirth,
And the great joy of our divine carouse,
As we hobnobbed it by the blazing hearth!
We never more, old pipe, shall see those days,
Whose memories lie like pictures in my mind;
But thou and I will go the self-same ways,
E'en though we leave all other friends behind.
And for thy sake, and for my own, and his,
We will be one, as we have ever been,
Thou dear old friend, with thy most honest phiz,
And no new faces come our loves between.
II.
Thou hast thy separate virtues, honest pipe!
Apart from all the memory of friends:
For thou art mellow, old, and black, and ripe;
And the good weed that in its smoke ascends
From thy rare bowl doth scent the liberal air
With incense richer than the woods of Ind.
E'en to the barren palate of despair
(Inhaled through cedar tubes from glorious Scinde!)
It hath a charm would quicken into life,
And make the heart gush out in streams of love,
And the earth, dead before, with beauty rife,
And full of flowers as heaven of stars above.
It is thy virtue and peculiar gift,
Thou sooty wizard of the potent weed;
No other pipe can thus the soul uplift,
Or such rare fancies and high musings breed.
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