Classic and Contemporary Poetry
MY MEERSCHAUMS, by CHARLES FLETCHER LUMMIS Poet's Biography First Line: Long pipes and short ones, straight and curved Last Line: That's wrong! Here, light yourself a new one! Subject(s): Smoking; Tobacco; Pipes; Cigars; Cigarettes | ||||||||
Long pipes and short ones, straight and curved, High carved and plain, dark-hued and creamy, Slim tubes for cigarettes reserved, And stout ones for Havanas dreamy. This cricket, on an amber spear Impaled, recalls that golden weather When love and I, too young to fear Heartburn, smoked cigarettes together. And even nowtoo old to take The little papered shams for flavour I light it oft for her sweet sake Who gave it, with her girlish favour. And here's the mighty student bowl Whose tutoring in and after college Has led me nearer wisdom's goal Than all I learned of text-book knowledge. "It taught me?" Ay, to hold my tongue, To keep a-light, and yet burn slowly, To break ill spells around me flung As with the enchanted whiff of Moly. This nargileh, whose hue betrays Perique from soft Louisiana, In Egypt once beguiled the days Of Tewfik's dreamy-eyed Sultana. Speaking of colour,do you know A maid with eyes as darkly splendid As are the hues that, rich and slow, On this Hungarian bowl have blended? Can artist paint the fiery glints Of this quaint finger here beside it, With amber nail,the lustrous tints, A thousand Partagas have dyed it? "And this old silver patched affair?" Well, sir, that meerschaum has its reasons For showing marks of time and wear; For in its smoke through fifty seasons My grandsire blew his cares away! And then, when done with life's sojourning, At seventy-five dropped dead one day, That pipe between his set teeth burning! "Killed him?" No doubt! it's apt to kill In fifty years' incessant using Some twenty pipes a day. And still, On that ripe, well-filled, lifetime musing, I envy oft so bright a part, To live as long as life's a treasure; To die ofnot an aching heart, Buthalf a century of pleasure! Well, well! I'm boring you, no doubt; How these old memories will undo one I see you've let your weed go out; That's wrong! Here, light yourself a new one! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ONE LAST DRAW OF THE PIPE by PAUL MULDOON CHANEL NO. 5 by LAURE-ANNE BOSSELAAR OLD MEN ON THE COURTHOUSE LAWN, MURRAY, KENTUCKY by JAMES GALVIN DOWN BY THE CARIB SEA: 2. LOS CIGARILLOS by JAMES WELDON JOHNSON A POE-'EM OF PASSION by CHARLES FLETCHER LUMMIS |
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