PLUG TOBACCO AT SOURDNAHUNK
Now just for a moment I’ll let the machine,
Grind lyrical praise of the base nicotine.
—An ode of a sort of a commonplace stripe
Addressed to plebeian cut-plug and the pipe.
Oh, answer me now, gentle friends of the line,
Who have sought the blest haunts of the
spruce and the pine,
Have you found in the woods that a fragrant
cigar
Tastes worse than an elm-root slopped over
with tar?
Queer thing, that, my friend, but it’s none the
less true,
—This quirk of tobacco—I’ll leave it to you!
But there’s savor in wreaths from the brier and
cob,
In the depths of the forest afar from the mob;
And an incense that’s sweet to ecstatic degree
Curls up from the bowl of the ancient T. D.
While choicest Perfectos smell ranker than
punk
In the shade of the hemlocks of Sourdnahunk.
Ah, here do the tables most wondrously turn!
The city olfactories sniff if you burn
Aught else than the finest Havana in rolls;
Folks turn up their noses at cut-plug in bowls;
You may roam where you like with the base
cigarette
But you can’t smoke your pipe in the house,
now you bet.
For curtains and pictures and hangings and
lace
All flutter rebukingly there in your face;
And wife and the daughters and neighbors all
cough
And wish that the pipe-smoking man would
break off.
But ah, gentle fisher, the woods shout to thee,
With fervent request that you bring the T. D.
For the reek that the flavored tobacco roll pours
Belongs back in town and not here out-of-
doors.
Leave there city manners, creased trousers,
your “job,”
Bring here to the woods your tobacco and cob,
The hemlocks above you will tenderly sigh
As the incense from pipe bowls drifts past to
the sky.
Ah, human magician, the secret is yours!
Would you work mystic charms in the world
out-of-doors?
Take you the alembic of chastened brown bowl.
Touch fire—and visions will comfort your soul,
As you gaze out at Life through the wreaths
from a junk
Of good plug tobacco at Sourdnahunk.