I can't extend to every friend In need a helping hand -- No matter though I wish it so, 'Tis not as Fortune planned; But haply may I fancy they Are men of different stripe Than others think who hint and wink, -- And so -- I smoke my pipe! A golden coal to crown the bowl -- My pipe and I alone, -- I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own: -- It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And so I smoke my pipe. And if inclined to moor my mind And cast the anchor Hope, A puff of breath will put to death The morbid misanthrope That lurks inside -- as errors hide In standing forms of type To mar at birth some line of worth; And so I smoke my pipe. The subtle stings misfortune flings Can give me little pain When my narcotic spell has wrought This quiet in my brain: When I can waste the past in taste So luscious and so ripe That like an elf I hug myself; And so I smoke my pipe. And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds, I watch the phantom's flight, Till alien eyes from Paradise Smile on me as I write: And I forgive the wrongs that live, As lightly as I wipe Away the tear that rises here; And so I smoke my pipe. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE SPHINX by RALPH WALDO EMERSON FLAMMONDE by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON SPRING THOUGHTS by FLORENCE E. BALDWIN WOONE SMILE MWORE by WILLIAM BARNES INVITATION by MATILDA BARBARA BETHAM-EDWARDS THE CANTERBURY TALES: THE MILLER'S TALE by GEOFFREY CHAUCER THE CANTERBURY TALES: THE PROLOGUE OF THE MONK'S TALE by GEOFFREY CHAUCER |