TO C.F. BRADFORD.


_ON THE GIFT OF A MEERSCHAUM PIPE._





The pipe came safe, and welcome, too,

As anything must be from you;

A meerschaum pure, 'twould float as light

As she the girls called Amphitrite.

Mixture divine of foam and clay,

From both it stole the best away:

Its foam is such as crowns the glow

Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot;

Its clay is bu
congested lymph

Jove chose to make some choicer nymph;

And here combined,--why, this must be

The birth of some enchanted sea,

Shaped to immortal form, the type

And very Venus of a pipe.



When high I heap it with the weed

From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed

Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore

And cast upon Virginia's shore,

I'll think,--So fill the fairer bowl

And wise alembic of thy soul,

With herbs far-sought that shall distil,

Not fumes to slacken thought and will,

But bracing essences that nerve

To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve.



When curls the smoke in eddies soft,

And hangs a shifting dream aloft,

That gives and takes, though chance-designed,

The impress of the dreamer's mind,

I'll think,--So let the vapors bred

By passion, in the heart or head,

Pass off and upward into space,

Waving farewells of tenderest grace,

Remembered in some happier time,

To blend their beauty with my rhyme.



While slowly o'er its candid bowl

The color deepens (as the soul

That burns in mortals leaves its trace

Of bale or beauty on the face),

I'll think,--So let the essence rare

Of years consuming make me fair;

So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse,

Steep me in some narcotic juice;

And if my soul must part with all

That whiteness which we greenness call,

Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown,

And make me beautifully brown!



Dream-forger, I refill thy cup

With reverie's wasteful pittance up,

And while the fire burns slow away,

Hiding itself in ashes gray,

I'll think,--As inward Youth retreats,

Compelled to spare his wasting heats,

When Life's Ash-Wednesday comes about,

And my head's gray with fires burnt out,

While stays one spark to light the eye,

With the last flash of memory,

'Twill leap to welcome C.F.B.,

Who sent my favorite pipe to me.



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.



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