Best Poems - Smoking

Favorite Poems – SMOKING

A Malediction On Tobacco – Anonymous

“Away with the stinking tobacco,
In my mouth it will ne’er go again;
By it breath and the teeth are damaged,
The chest harmed in many men.

It robs you of memory and sense,
The legs go bent in their stride,
It sets up a buzz in the head,
Causes pearl to grow on the eye.

Never grew any herb more vile
On the soil of Conn’s green land,
It makes silver and gold disappear,
Leaves the heirs with empty hands.

Few of its faults go unshared,
From far lands it came to our isle;
Of this women should well be aware:
In menfolk it weakens desire.

Who would wish a long life to enjoy
Need not find any reason more:
It was Lucifer, master of guile,
First decided that tree to grow.”

The Best Cigarette – Billy Collins

“There are many that I miss
having sent my last one out a car window
sparking along the road one night, years ago.

The heralded one, of course:
after sex, the two glowing tips
now the lights of a single ship;
at the end of a long dinner
with more wine to come
and a smoke ring coasting into the chandelier;
or on a white beach,
holding one with fingers still wet from a swim.

How bittersweet these punctuations
of flame and gesture;
but the best were on those mornings
when I would have a little something going
in the typewriter,
the sun bright in the windows,
maybe some Berlioz on in the background.
I would go into the kitchen for coffee
and on the way back to the page,
curled in its roller,
I would light one up and feel
its dry rush mix with the dark taste of coffee.

Then I would be my own locomotive,
trailing behind me as I returned to work
little puffs of smoke,
indicators of progress,
signs of industry and thought,
the signal that told the nineteenth century
it was moving forward.
That was the best cigarette,
when I would steam into the study
full of vaporous hope
and stand there,
the big headlamp of my face
pointed down at all the words in parallel lines.”

The Betrothed – Rudyard Kipling

"Open the old cigar-box, get me a Cuba stout,
For things are running crossways, and Maggie and I are out.

We quarrelled about Havanas—we fought o'er a good cheroot,
And I knew she is exacting, and she says I am a brute.

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a space;
In the soft blue veil of the vapour musing on Maggie's face.

Maggie is pretty to look at—Maggie's a loving lass,
But the prettiest cheeks must wrinkle, the truest of loves must pass.

There's peace in a Laranaga, there's calm in a Henry Clay;
But the best cigar in an hour is finished and thrown away—

Thrown away for another as perfect and ripe and brown—
But I could not throw away Maggie for fear o' the talk o' the town!

Maggie, my wife at fifty—grey and dour and old—
With never another Maggie to purchase for love or gold!

And the light of Days that have Been the dark of the Days that Are,
And Love's torch stinking and stale, like the butt of a dead cigar—

The butt of a dead cigar you are bound to keep in your pocket—
With never a new one to light tho' it's charred and black to the socket!

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider a while.
Here is a mild Manila—there is a wifely smile.

Which is the better portion—bondage bought with a ring,
Or a harem of dusky beauties, fifty tied in a string?

Counsellors cunning and silent—comforters true and tried,
And never a one of the fifty to sneer at a rival bride?

Thought in the early morning, solace in time of woes,
Peace in the hush of the twilight, balm ere my eyelids close,

This will the fifty give me, asking nought in return,
With only a Suttee's passion—to do their duty and burn.

This will the fifty give me. When they are spent and dead,
Five times other fifties shall be my servants instead.

The furrows of far-off Java, the isles of the Spanish Main,
When they hear my harem is empty will send me my brides again.

I will take no heed to their raiment, nor food for their mouths withal,
So long as the gulls are nesting, so long as the showers fall.

I will scent 'em with best vanilla, with tea will I temper their hides,
And the Moor and the Mormon shall envy who read of the tale of my brides.

For Maggie has written a letter to give me my choice between
The wee little whimpering Love and the great god Nick o' Teen.

And I have been servant of Love for barely a twelvemonth clear,
But I have been Priest of Cabanas a matter of seven year;

And the gloom of my bachelor days is flecked with the cheery light
Of stumps that I burned to Friendship and Pleasure and Work and Fight.

And I turn my eyes to the future that Maggie and I must prove,
But the only light on the marshes is the Will-o'-the-Wisp of Love.

Will it see me safe through my journey or leave me bogged in the mire?
Since a puff of tobacco can cloud it, shall I follow the fitful fire?

Open the old cigar-box—let me consider anew—
Old friends, and who is Maggie that I should abandon you?

A million surplus Maggies are willing to bear the yoke;
And a woman is only a woman, but a good Cigar is a Smoke.

Light me another Cuba—I hold to my first-sworn vows.
If Maggie will have no rival, I'll have no Maggie for Spouse!"

A Farewell To Tobacco – Charles lamb

“May the Babylonish curse

Strait confound my stammering verse,

If I can a passage see

In this word-perplexity,

Or a fit expression find,

Or a language to my mind,

(Still the phrase is wide or scant)

To take leave of thee, GREAT PLANT!

Or in any terms relate

Half my love, or half my hate:

For I hate, yet love, thee so,

That, whichever thing I shew,

The plain truth will seem to be

A constrained hyperbole,

And the passion to proceed
More from a mistress than a weed.

Sooty retainer to the vine,

Bacchus’ black servant, negro fine;

Sorcerer, that mak’st us dote upon

Thy begrimed complexion,

And, for thy pernicious sake,

More and greater oaths to break

Than reclaimed lovers take

‘Gainst women: thou thy siege dost lay

Much too in the female way,

While thou suck’st the lab’ring breath

Faster than kisses or than death.

Thou in such a cloud dost bind us,

That our worst foes cannot find us,

And ill fortune, that would thwart us,

Shoots at rovers, shooting at us;

While each man, thro’ thy height’ning steam,

Does like a smoking Etna seem,

And all about us does express

(Fancy and wit in richest dress)
A Sicilian fruitfulness.

Thou through such a mist dost shew us,

That our best friends do not know us,

And, for those allowed features,

Due to reasonable creatures,

Liken’st us to fell Chimeras,

Monsters that, who see us, fear us;

Worse than Cerberus or Geryon,
Or, who first lov’d a cloud, Ixion.

Bacchus we know, and we allow

His tipsy rites. But what art thou,

That but by reflex can’st shew

What his deity can do,

As the false Egyptian spell

Aped the true Hebrew miracle?

Some few vapours thou may’st raise,

The weak brain may serve to amaze,

But to the reigns and nobler heart
Can’st nor life nor heat impart.

Brother of Bacchus, later born,

The old world was sure forlorn,

Wanting thee, that aidest more

The god’s victories than before

All his panthers, and the brawls

Of his piping Bacchanals.

These, as stale, we disallow,
Or judge of thee meant – only thou

His true Indian conquest art;

AND, for ivy round his dart,

The reformed god now weaves

A finer thyrus of thy leaves.

Scent to match thy rich perfume

Chemic art did ne’er presume

Through her quaint alembic strain,

None so sovereign to the brain.

Nature, that did in thee excel,

Fram’d again no second smell

Roses, violets, but toys

For the smaller sort of boys,

Or for greener damsels meant;

Thou art the only manly scent.

Stinking’st of the stinking kind,

Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind,

Africa, that brags her foyson,

Breeds no such prodigious poison,

Henbane, nightshade, both together,

Hemlock, aconite

Nay, rather, Plant divine, of rarest virtue;

Blisters on the tongue would hurt you.

‘Twas but in a sort I blam’d thee;

None e’er prosper’d who defam’d thee;

Irony all, and feign’d abuse,

Such as perplext lovers use,

At a need, when, in despair

To paint forth their fairest fair,

Or in part but to express

That exceeding comeliness

Which their fancies doth do strike,

They borrow language of dislike;

And, instead of Dearest Miss,

Jewel, Honey, Sweetheart, Bliss,

And those forms of old admiring,

Call her Cockatrice and Siren,

Basilisk, and all that’s evil,

Witch, Hyena, Mermaid, Devil,

Ethiop, Wench, and Blackamoor,

Monkey, Ape, and twenty more;

Friendly Trait’ress, loving Foe,

Not that she is truly so,

But no other way they know

A contentment to express,

Borders so upon excess,

That they do not rightly wot
Whether it be pain or not.

Or, as men, constrained to part

With what’s nearest to their heart,

While their sorrow’s at the height,

Lose discrimination quite,

And their hasty wrath let fall,

To appease their frantic gall,

On the darling thing whatever

Whence they feel it death to sever,

Though it be, as they, perforce,

Guiltless of the sad divorce.

For I must (nor let it grieve thee,

Friendliest of plants, that I must) leave thee.

For thy sake, TOBACCO, I

Would do any thing but die,

And but seek to extend my days

Long enough to sing thy praise.

But, as she, who once hath been

A king’s consort, is a queen

Ever after, nor will bate

Any title of her state,

Though a widow, or divorced,

So I, from thy converse forced,

The old name and style retain,

A right Katherine of Spain;

And a seat, too, ‘mongst the joys

Of the blest Tobacco Boys;

Where, though I, by sour physician,

Am debarr’d the full fruition

Of thy favours, I may catch

Some collateral sweets, and snatch

Sidelong odours, that give life

Like glances from a neighbour’s wife;

And still live in the by-places

And the suburbs of thy graces;

And in thy borders take delight,

An unconquer’d Canaanite.”

To My Cigar – Charles Sprague

“Yes, social friend, I love thee well,
In learned doctors’ spite;
Thy clouds all other clouds dispel
And lap me in delight…”

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