Flash'd many fancies rare;
Flash'd like Aurora's glare;
Quick jotted down with care;
Some the reverse of fair;
Some that we well could spare;
Some that were made to bear
Blunders unnumbered.
Plunging in metaphor,
Not a bit better for—
Pardon the Cockney rhyme!—
Similies plunder'd.
Praising Tobacco smoke,
Heeding not grammar's yoke,
Prosody's rules they broke.
Many a rhyming moke,
Sense from rhyme sundered:
Many wrote well, but not—
Not the Six Hundred.
Honour Tobacco! roll'd,
Cut, press'd, however sold.
Alpha and Beta, bold,
Ye shall be tipp'd with gold.
Omega shall be sold,
Others in type behold
Nearly Six Hundred."
The following poem entitled "Weedless," after Byron's "Darkness," gives a vivid description of the world without tobacco.
"I had a dream, and it was all a dream:
Tobacco was abolish'd, and cigars
Were flung by "Antis" fearsome space—
The foreign and the British fared alike—
And the blue smoke was blown beyond the moon.
Night came and went and came, and brought no "weed,"
And men forgot their suppers, in the dread
Of the dire desolation; and all tongues
Were tingling with the taste of empty pipes;
And they did live all wretched; old hay bands,
And street-door mats, and clover brown and dry;
Carpets, rope-yarn, and such things as men sell,
Were burnt for 'bacca; haystacks were consumed,
And men were gathered round each blazing mass,
To have another makeshift sniff.
Happy were those who smoked, with smould'ring logs,
The harmless Yarmouth bloater after death—
Another pipe not all the world contain'd;
The furze was set on fire, but, hour by hour,
The stock diminish'd; all the prickly points
Quivered to death, and soon it all was gone.
The lips of men by the expiring stuff
Drew in and out, and all the world had fits.
The cinders fell upon them; some sprang up,
And blew their noses loud, and some did stand
Upon their heads, and sway'd despairing feet;
And others madly up and down the world
With "two-pence" hurried, shouting out for "Shag;"
And wink'd and blink'd at th' unclouded sky,
The "Anti's" smokeless banner—then again
Flung all their halfpence down into the dust,
And chewed their tainted pockets; snuffers wept,
And, flatt'ning noses on the dreary ground,
Inhaled the useless dust; the biggest "rough"
Came mild, tobacco-begging; p'licement came,
And mix'd themselves among the multitude,
"Run in" forgotten; uniforms were chew'd,
And teeth which for a moment had had rest,
Did move themselves again; old beaver hats
Fetch'd little fortunes; they were torn in bits,
And smok'd or chew'd at will; no bits were left.
All earth was but one thought, and that was smoke,
Immediate and glorious; and a pang
Of horror came at intervals, and men
Cried; and the boys were restless as themselves,
Till by degrees their stockings were devour'd;
E'en pipes were dropp'd despairing—all, save one,
One man was faithful to his pipe, and kept
Despair and deeper misery at bay,
By seeking ever for a "topper," dropped
From some spurned pipe, but that he could not find;
So, with a piteous and perpetual glare,
And a quick dissolute word, sucking the pipe,
Which answer'd never with a whiff, he slept;
The crowd dispersed by slow degrees, but two
Of all the dreary company remain'd,
And they kept 'bacca shops; they sat upon
The scanted lid of a tobacco tub,
Wherein was heap'd a mass of coined bronze—
Profits of 'bacca, sold—they were sold out;
They, grinning, scraped with their warm, eager hands
The little halfpence and the bigger pence,
Counted a little time, and cried "Haw! haw!"
Like a whole rookery; then lifted up
The tub as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's profits; saw, and smiled, and winked,
Uncaring that the world was poor indeed,
So they were rich in pence. The world was mad,
The populace and peerage both alike
Birds—Eyeless, Shagless, and returnless, too—
Oh! day of death, oh! chaos of hard times!—
And princes, dukes, and lords, they all stood still,
Feeling within their pockets' silent depths;
And sailors went a-moaning out to sea,
And chew'd their cables piecemeal: then they wept,
And slept on the abyss without a quid.
All quids were gone, cigars were in their graves;
The plant, their mother, had been rooted up;
Pawnbrokers had a ton of pipes apiece,
And "Antis" triumph'd. Then they had no need
To keep a "Sec.," so Reynolds got the "sack."
One of the best of all parodies is one in imitation of Longfellow's "Excelsior," entitled "Tobacco." It is from "Copis' Tobacco Plant."
The Strange Youth.
"The summer blight was falling fast,
When straight through dirty London passed
A youth, who bore, through road and street,
A packet, thereon written neat;
"Tobacco!"
His brow was glad, his laughing eye
Flashed like a gooseberry in a pie;
And like a penny whistle rung
The piping notes of that strange tongue—
"Tobacco!"
In dusty homes he saw the light
Of supper fires gleam warm and bright;
Above, the ruddy chimneys smoked:
He from his lips the word evoked—
"Tobacco!"