Effusion by a Cigar Smoker
Warriors! who from the cannon’s mouth blow fire,
Your fame to raise,
Upon its blaze,
Alas! ye do but light your funeral pyre!
Tempting Fate’s stroke;
Ye fall, and all your glory ends in smoke.
Safe in my chair from wounds and woe,
My fire and smoke from mine own mouth I blow.
Ye booksellers! who deal, like me, in puffs,
The public smokes,
You and your hoax,
And turns your empty vapor to rebuffs.
Ye through the nose
Pay for each puff; when mine the same way flows,
It does not run me into debt;
And thus, the more I fume, the less I fret.
Authors! created to be puff’d to death,
And fill the mouth
Of some uncouth
Bookselling wight, who sucks your brains and breath,
Your leaves thus far
(Without its fire) resemble my cigar;
But vapid, uninspired, and flat:
When, when, O Bards, will ye compose like that?
Since life and the anxieties that share
Our hopes and trust,
Are smoke and dust,
Give me the smoke and dust that banish care.
The roll’d leaf bring,
Which from its ashes, Phoenix-like, can spring;
The fragrant leaf whose magic balm
Can, like Nepenthe, all our sufferings charm.
Oh, what supreme beatitude is this!
What soft and sweet
Sensations greet
My soul, and wrap it in Elysian bliss!
I soar above
Dull earth in these ambrosial clouds, like Jove,
And from my empyrean height
Look down upon the world with calm delight.
HORACE SMITH.