"
Did it, safe hidden in some secret cavern,
Escape that monarch's pipoclastic ken?
Has Shakespeare smoked it at the Mermaid Tavern,
Quaffing a cup of sack with rare old Ben?
Ay, Shakespeare might have watched his vast creations
Loom through its smoke,--the spectre-haunted Thane,
The Sisters at their ghostly invocations,
The jealous Moor, and melancholy Dane.
Round its orbed haze and through its mazy ringlets,
Titania may have led her elfin rout,
Or Ariel fanned it with his gauzy winglets,
Or Puck danced in the bowl to put it out.
Vain are all fancies,--questions bring no answer;
The smokers vanish, but the pipe remains;
He were indeed a subtle necromancer,
Could read their records in its cloudy stains.
Nor this alone. Its destiny may doom it
To outlive e'en its use and history;
Some ploughman of the future may exhume it
From soil now deep beneath the Eastern sea.
And, treasured by soma antiquarian Stultus,
It may to gaping visitors be shown
Labelled: "The symbol of some ancient cultus
Conjecturally Phallic, but unknown."
Why do I thus recall the ancient quarrel
Twixt Man and Time, that marks all earthly things?
Why labor to re-word the hackneyed moral
[Greek: Hos phyllon genee], as Homer sings?
'[Omega][sigmaf] [phi][upsilon][lambda][lambda][omega][nu]
[gamma][epsilon][nu][epsilon][eta], as Homer sings?
For this: Some links we forge are never broken;
Some feelings claim exemption from decay;
And Love, of which this pipe is but the token,
Shall last, though pipes and smokers pass away.
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