To My Cigar

Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctor’s spite;
Thy clouds all other clouds dispel,
And lap me in delight.

What though they tell, with phizzes long,
My years are sooner past!
I would reply with reason strong,
They’re sweeter while they last.

When in the lonely evening hour,
Attended but by thee,
O’er history’s varied page I pore,
Man’s fate in thine I see.

Oft as the snowy column grows,
Then breaks and falls away,
I trace how mighty realms thus rose,
Thus tumbled to decay.

Awhile like thee earth’s masters burn
And smoke and fume around;
And then, like thee, to ashes turn,
And mingle with the ground.

Life’s but a leaf adroitly rolled,
And Time’s the wasting breath
That, late or early, we behold
Gives all to dusty death.

From beggar’s frieze to monarch’s robe,
One common doom is passed;
Sweet Nature’s works, the swelling globe,
Must all burn out at last.

And what is he who smokes thee now?
A little moving heap,
That soon, like thee, to fate must bow,
With thee in dust must sleep.

But though thy ashes downward go,
Thy essence rolls on high;
Thus, when my body lieth low,
My soul shall cleave the sky.

CHARLES SPRAGUE.