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.

MY PIPE.

  When love grows cool, thy fire still warms me;
  When friends are fled, thy presence charms me. 
  If thou art full, though purse be bare,
  I smoke, and cast away all care!

German Smoking Song.

THE FARMER’S PIPE.

  Make a picture, dreamy smoke,
    In my still and cosey room;
  From the fading past evoke
    Forms that breathe of summer’s bloom.

  Bashful Will and rosy Nell—­
    Ah, I watch them now at play
  By the mossy wayside well
    As I did twelve years to-day.

  We were younger then, my pipe: 
    You are dingy now and worn;
  And my fruit is more than ripe,
    And my fields are brown and shorn.

  Nell has merry eyes of blue,
    And is timid, pure, and mild;
  Will is fair and brave and true,
    And a neighboring farmer’s child.

  Little maid is busy, too,
    Making rare, fictitious pies,
  Just as any wife would do,
    Looking, meanwhile, wondrous wise.