The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 408 pages of information about The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4.

The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 408 pages of information about The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4.

    Fierce Anthropophagi,
  Spectra, Diaboli,
  What scared St. Anthony,
  Hobgoblins, Lemures,
  Dreams of Antipodes,
  Night-riding Incubi,
  Troubling the fantasy,
  All dire illusions
  Causing confusions;
  Figments heretical,
  Scruples fantastical,
  Doubts diabolical;
  Abaddon vexeth me,
  Mahu perplexeth me,
  Lucifer teareth me——­

Jesu!  Maria! liberate nos ab his diris tentationibus Inimici.

* * * * *

A FAREWELL TO TOBACCO.

  May the Babylonish curse
  Straight confound my stammering verse,
  If I can a passage see
  In this word-perplexity,
  Or a fit expression find,
  Or a language to my mind,
  (Still the phrase is wide or scant)
  To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT! 
  Or in any terms relate
  Half my love, or half my hate: 
  For I hate, yet love, thee so,
  That, whichever thing I show,
  The plain truth will seem to be
  A constrain’d hyperbole,
  And the passion to proceed
  More from a mistress than a weed.

    Sooty retainer to the vine,
  Bacchus’ black servant, negro fine;
  Sorcerer, that mak’st us dote upon
  Thy begrimed complexion,
  And, for thy pernicious sake,
  More and greater oaths to break
  Than reclaimed lovers take
  ’Gainst women:  thou thy siege dost lay
  Much too in the female way,
  While thou suck’st the lab’ring breath
  Faster than kisses or than death.

    Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,
  That our worst foes cannot find us,
  And ill-fortune, that would thwart us. 
  Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;
  While each man, through thy height’ning steam,
  Does like a smoking Etna seem,
  And all about us does express
  (Fancy and wit in richest dress)
  A Sicilian fruitfulness.

    Thou through such a mist dost show us,
  That our best friends do not know us,
  And, for those allowed features,
  Due to reasonable creatures,
  Liken’st us to fell Chimeras,
  Monsters that, who see us, fear us;
  Worse than Cerberus or Geryon,
  Or, who first loved a cloud, Ixion.

    Bacchus we know, and we allow
  His tipsy rites.  But what art thou,
  That but by reflex canst show
  What his deity can do,
  As the false Egyptian spell
  Aped the true Hebrew miracle
  Some few vapors thou may’st raise,
  The weak brain may serve to amaze,
  But to the reins and nobler heart
  Canst nor life nor heat impart.

    Brother of Bacchus, later born,
  The old world was sure forlorn
  Wanting thee, that aidest more
  The god’s victories than before
  All his panthers, and the brawls
  Of his piping Bacchanals. 
  These, as stale, we disallow,
  Or judge of thee meant; only thou
  His true Indian conquest art;
  And, for ivy round his dart,
  The reformed god now weaves
  A finer thyrsus of thy leaves.

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Project Gutenberg
The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.