To justify his smoking such a Pipe!

What country gave it birth? What blest of cities

Saw it first kindle at the glowing coal?

What happy artist murmured, “Nunc dimittis,”

When he had fashioned this transcendent bowl?

Has it been hoarded in a monarch’s treasures?

Was it a gift of peace, or prize of war?

Did the great Khalif in his “House of Pleasures”

Wager, and lose it to the good Zaafar?

It may have soothed mild Spenser’s melancholy,