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.

A POT, AND A PIPE OF TOBACCO.

      Some praise taking snuff;
      And ’tis pleasant enough
  To those who have got the right knack, O! 
      But give me, my boys,
      Those exquisite joys,
  A pot, and a pipe of tobacco.

      When fume follows fume
      To the top of the room,
  In circles pursuing their track, O! 
      How sweet to inhale
      The health-giving gale
  Of a pipe of Virginia tobacco.

      Let soldiers so bold
      For fame or for gold
  Their enemies cut, slash, and hack, O! 
      We have fire and smoke,
      Though all but in joke,
  In a peaceable pipe of tobacco.

      Should a mistress, unkind,
      Be inconstant in mind,
  And on your affections look black, O! 
      Let her wherrit and tiff,
      ’Twill blow off in a whiff,
  If you take but a pipe of tobacco.

      The miserly elf,
      Who, in hoarding his pelf,
  Keeps body and soul on the rack, O! 
      Would he bless and be blest,
      He might open his chest
  By taking a pipe of tobacco.

      Politicians so wise,
      All ears and all eyes
  For news, till their addled pates crack, O! 
      After puzzling their brains,
      Will not get for their pains
  The worth of a pipe of tobacco

      If your land in the claw
      Of a limb of the law
  You trust, or your health to a quack, O! 
      ’Tis fifty to one
      They’re both as soon gone
  As you’d puff out a pipe of tobacco.

      Life’s short, ’tis agreed;
      So we’ll try from the weed,
  Of man a brief emblem to tack, O! 
      When his spirit ascends,
      Die he must,—­and he ends
  In dust, like a pipe of tobacco.

From “The Universal Songster, or Museum of Mirth."