Start not—’tis true, or I’m a living liar!

But pipes on pipes of “Bacca,” day by day,

With poison laden, did their fates control;

Strong-smelling oil stopp’d up the narrow way,

And now they may no more console my soul.

Full many a pipe, of purest briar root,

The stern schoolmaster confiscates and breaks;

Full many a clay, too, seized is by the brute,

And flung with tops and marbles, buttons, cakes.

One colour’d meerschaum that, in hidden poke