THE DREAMER’S PIPE.

  Meerschaum, thing with amber tip,
  Clutched between the dreamer’s lip,
  Fragrant odors from thy bowl
  Mingling with the dreamer’s soul;
  Curling wreaths of smoke ascending,
  Comfort sweet with incense blending. 
  Joy and peace and solace sending
      To the dreamer’s heart.

  Fashioned like a satyr’s head,
  Crowned with fire, glowing red,
  Quaintly carved and softly sleek
  As Afric maiden’s downy cheek. 
  Comrade of each idle hour
  In forest shade or leafy bower;
  Lotus-eaters from thy power
      Ne’er can break apart.

  Darkly colored from long use
  With tobacco’s balmy juice
  From snowy white to ebon turned
  By the incense daily burned. 
  Laid at night within thy case
  Of velvet soft—­thy resting place—­
  Whence with leering, stained face
      Daily thou must start,—­

  To soothe the dreamer’s every care,
  To glow and burn and fill the air
  With thy curling perfume rare: 
  As thou charmest gloom away,
  With the dreamer rest for aye
  Friend of youth, and manhood ripe
  All hail to thee, thou meerschaum pipe!

New Orleans Times Democrat.

SUBLIME TOBACCO.

  But here the herald of the self-same mouth
  Came breathing o’er the aromatic South,
  Not like a “bed of violets” on the gale,
  But such as wafts its cloud o’er grog or ale,
  Borne from a short, frail pipe, which yet had blown
  Its gentle odors over either zone,
  And, puff’d where’er minds rise or waters roll,
  Had wafted smoke from Portsmouth to the Pole,
  Opposed its vapor as the lightning flash’d,
  And reek’d, ’midst mountain billows unabashed,
  To AEolus a constant sacrifice,
  Through every change of all the varying skies. 
  And what was he who bore it?  I may err,
  But deem him sailor or philosopher. 
  Sublime tobacco! which from east to west
  Cheers the tar’s labor or the Turkman’s rest;
  Which on the Moslem’s ottoman divides
  His hours, and rivals opiums and his brides;
  Magnificent in Stamboul, but less grand,
  Though not less loved, in Wapping on the Strand;
  Divine in hookas, glorious in a pipe,
  When tipp’d with amber, mellow, rich, and ripe;
  Like other charmers, wooing the caress
  More dazzlingly when daring in full dress;
  Yet thy true lovers more admire by far
  Thy naked beauties,—­give me a cigar!

LORD BYRON: 

The Island, Canto ii., Stanza 19.

SMOKING AWAY.

  Floating away like the fountains’ spray,
    Or the snow-white plume of a maiden,
  The smoke-wreaths rise to the starlit skies
    With blissful fragrance laden.