I can n'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.