OUNG England, ’twixt its idle lips,
A tiny twirl of ’baccy grips,
And puffs a lazy cloud of blue,
And rests between a draw or two.
Our youth, alas! have grown of late
So languid and effeminate,
They’ve dropped cigars and heavy wet
For lemon-squash and cigarette.
The vulgar pipe is rarely seen
Their dainty lisping lips between;
The dude would scorn a big cigar,
His tout ensemble a weed would mar;
And so he rolls the paper toys
We used to smoke as little boys,
And all the dressed-up, mashing set
Affect the foreign cigarette.
But now they tremble and go pale—
The doctors tell a dreadful tale.
A wretched fellow writes to say
They’d better throw such weeds away.
Their faultless shirt-fronts quake with fear,
And crease and tumble when they hear
They in their breasts a viper pet—
There’s poison in the cigarette.
Go! let the foreign fellow puff
His tissue-paper Turkish stuff,
But let Young England scorn its yoke,
And once more like a Briton smoke
Between his lips a good cigar,
Whose bright red glow one sees afar:
He’ll feel a man, and soon forget
The poisoned foreign cigarette.
The Early Milk-Cart.
DO not know what you are like—I know not where you go;
I’ve never seen you as you jolt along the streets below.
It’s always in the early morn my house you rattle by,
And banish sleep that won’t return, however hard I try.
I wonder if the fiend, who drives like mad through Gower Street,
And on the asphalte likes to hear his horse’s heavy feet,
And bangs against the kerb and makes his swaying milk-cans crash,
Desires to settle straight away a nervous mortal’s hash.
Through weary hours I lie awake and toss from side to side,
A genuine Jekyll tortured by a much too real Hyde;
And when at last my drooping lids have shut that Hyde away,
The early milk-cart rattles by and bids the demon stay.
You little reck, you noisy thing, as ’neath the fading stars
You jump and jolt, that every jerk on some poor toiler jars;
You little reck, as merrily your cans together bang,
You’ve roused a serpent in my breast which has a poisoned fang.