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.



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