To a Pipe of Tobacco

Come, lovely tube, by friendship blest,
Belov’d and honored by the wise,
Come filled with honest “Weekly’s best,”
And kindled from the lofty skies.

While round me clouds of incense roll,
With guiltless joys you charm the sense,
And nobler pleasure to the soul
In hints of moral truth dispense.

Soon as you feel th’ enliv’ning ray,
To dust you hasten to return,
And teach me that my earliest day
Began to give me to the urn.

But though thy grosser substance sink
To dust, thy purer part aspires;
This when I see, I joy to think
That earth but half of me requires.

Like thee, myself am born to die,
Made half to rise, and half to fall.
Oh, could I, while my moments fly,
The bliss you give me give to all!

Gentleman’s Magazine, July, 1745.

In the smoke of my dear cigarito
Cloud castles rise gorgeous and tall;
And Eros, divine muchachito,
With smiles hovers over it all.

But dreaming, forgetting to cherish
The fire at my lips as it dies,
The dream and the rapture must perish,
And Eros descend from the skies.

O wicked and false muchachito,
Your rapture I yet may recall;
But, like my re-lit cigarito,
A bitterness tinges it all.

CAMILLA K. VON K.