A BRIEF PUFF OF SMOKE.

Great Doctor Parr, the learned Whig,
Ne'er deemed the smoke-cloud _infra dig._,
In which you could not see his wig,
Involved in clouds of smoke.

Quaint Lamb his wit would oft enshroud
In smoke-igniting laughter loud,
Like summer thunder in the cloud,--
The lightning in the smoke.

Dean Swift "died at the top;" his head
Had drifting clouds when wit had fled:
Dull care lurked in his brain, instead
Of blowing out in smoke.

And Cowper mild--no smoker he,
Bard of the sofa and bohea--
Complained his "dear friend Bull" not free
From lowering Stygian smoke.

Clouds in his non-inebriate nob
Were doomed the tea tables to rob,
Inflicting many a painful throb
On one who could not smoke!

Smoke on! it is the steam of life,
The smoother of the waves of strife;
Where chimneys smoke, or scolds the wife,
The counteraction--smoke.

We ride and work and weave by steam,
Till ages past seem like a dream
In a new world whose dawning beam
Is redolent of smoke.

We travel like a comet wild
On which some distant sun had smiled,
And from his orbit thus beguiled
With a long tail of smoke.

The clouds arise from smoking seas,
And give, with each conveying breeze,
Life to the "weed," and herbs, and trees,
Which turn again to smoke.

All nations smoke! Havana's pother
Smokes friendly with its Broseley brother:
The world's one end puffs to the other,
In amicable smoke.

When plague and pestilence go forth,
And to diseases dire give birth,
Which walk in darkness through the earth,
I clothe myself in smoke.

I smoke through desolating years,
Tabooed from fever, void of fears,
And when some dreaded pest appears,
I call in Doctor Smoke.

Go, reader! perfume ladies' hair
And scent the ringlets of the fair
With eau Cologne and odors rare
Aloof from healthy smoke.

Go babble at the ball and rout,
And smirk with high-born dames who doubt:
Thy flames are quenched, thy fires are out,
And sinking into smoke.

"Better," said Johnson, great in name,
"It were, when poets droop in fame,
To see smoke brighten into flame,
Than flames sink into smoke."

SELIM: _Eclectic Magazine_.





Next: A SYMPHONY IN SMOKE.
Previous: THE SMOKER'S REVERIE.

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