PERNICIOUS WEED!

  The pipe, with solemn interposing puff,
  Makes half a sentence at a time enough;
  The dozing sages drop the drowsy strain,
  Then pause and puff, and speak, and pause again. 
  Such often, like the tube they so admire,
  Important triflers! have more smoke than fire. 
  Pernicious weed! whose scent the fair annoys,
  Unfriendly to society’s chief joys,
  Thy worst effect is banishing for hours
  The sex whose presence civilizes ours.

WILLIAM COWPER.

TWO OTHER HEARTS.

  Full tender beamed the light of love down from his manly face,
  As he pressed her to his bosom in a fervent, fond embrace. 
  No cost of others’ happiness found place within his thought;
  The weakness of life’s brittle thread no dim forebodings brought.

  But tenderer than the light of love, more brittle than life’s
          thread,
  The shrouds that wrapped two other hearts gave up their withered
          dead;
  For, crumbling in his waistcoat, their glowing future dashed,
  Two excellent Havanas were very badly smashed.

London Tobacco.

THE SMOKE TRAVELLER.

  When I puff my cigarette,
    Straight I see a Spanish girl,—­
    Mantilla, fan, coquettish curl,
    Languid airs and dimpled face,
    Calculating, fatal grace;
    Hear a twittering serenade
    Under lofty balcony played;
    Queen at bull-fight, naught she cares
    What her agile lover dares;
  She can love and quick forget.

  Let me but my meerschaum light,
    I behold a bearded man,
    Built upon capacious plan,
    Sabre-slashed in war or duel,
    Gruff of aspect, but not cruel,
    Metaphysically muddled,
    With strong beer a little fuddled,
    Slow in love, and deep in books,
    More sentimental than he looks,
  Swears new friendships every night.

  Let me my chibouk enkindle,—­
    In a tent I’m quick set down
    With a Bedouin, lean and brown,
    Plotting gain of merchandise,
    Or perchance of robber prize;
    Clumsy camel load upheaving,
    Woman deftly carpet-weaving,
    Meal of dates and bread and salt,
    While in azure heavenly vault
  Throbbing stars begin to dwindle.

  Glowing coal in clay dudheen
    Carries me to sweet Killarney,
    Full of hypocritic blarney,—­
    Huts with babies, pigs, and hens
    Mixed together, bogs and fens,
    Shillalahs, praties, usquebaugh,
    Tenants defying hated law,
    Fair blue eyes with lashes black,
    Eyes black and blue from cudgel-thwack,—­
  So fair, so foul, is Erin green.