A Farewell to Tobacco

MAY the Babylonish curse Straight 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 show, 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 reclaimèd lovers take ’Gainst women! Thou thy siege dost lay Much, too, in the female way, While thou suck’st the laboring 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, through thy heightening 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 show 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 loved a cloud, Ixion. Bacchus we know, and we allow His tipsy rites. But what art thou, That but by reflex canst show What his deity can do,— As the false Egyptian spell Aped the true Hebrew miracle? Some few vapors thou mayst raise The weak brain may serve to amaze; But to the reins and nobler heart Canst 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 reformèd god now weaves A finer thyrsus 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, Framed 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. Stinkingest of the stinking kind! Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind! Africa, that brags her foison, 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! ’T was but in a sort I blamed thee; None e’er prospered who defamed thee; Irony all, and feigned abuse, Such as perplexèd 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 so 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 from 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. Would do anything 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 tittle 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 debarred the full fruition Of thy favors, I may catch Some collateral sweets, and snatch Sidelong odors, that give life Like glances from a neighbor’s wife; And still live in the by-places And the suburbs of thy graces; And in thy borders take delight, An unconquered Canaanite.