Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TO HIS PIPE, IN ABSENCE, by ALFRED DENNIS GODLEY


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TO HIS PIPE, IN ABSENCE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Faithful companion of my wanderings
Last Line: To deck my room, a patriarch of pipes.
Alternate Author Name(s): Godley, A. D.
Subject(s): Smoking; Tobacco; Pipes; Cigars; Cigarettes


FAITHFUL companion of my wanderings
By river, road, and mountain: quickener
Of contemplation: comrade, who with me
Hast seen on Alpine pinnacles the dawn
Rubescent, and in lucubration late
Outwatched Orion: fare thee well, my Pipe --
Neglectfully beside the dusty road
Abandoned! where the weary wayfarer
Halting, from Chiltern's beech-immantled height
Sees through a waving tracery of leaves
The misty plain Oxonian: there thou liest ...
Blame not thy heedless master: rather blame
The star and black malevolence of Fate
Which all that day hung o'er me, till at eve
Some jagged flint my swift-revolving tire,
Transpiercing, crippled: yet e'en that mishap
I bore more lightly than the loss of thee.
Perchance some tramp thy black but comely form
Hath ravished, and among his beery mates
Exhibits in a wayside public-house
A godsend: where thy sad reluctant maw,
Thy sheeny bowl wherein I took delight,
With horrid shag or villainous returns
He gorges -- all unworthy of his prize,
And knowing not the academic care
Wherewith thou once wert tended: now, alas!
Remembering oft thy comfortable home
And studious lair 'mid miscellaneous books,
Thou must associate with common clays,
Old broken clays, and beastly pots of beer.
Perish the thought! but with the advancing spring
May thickening grass and fronds of spreading fern
Protect thee from the spoiler: till perchance
Returning thither on a luckier day
I find thee 'neath the covert, and restore
Thy interrupted honours: once again
To deck my room, a patriarch of pipes.





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