Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: TO C. F. BRADFORD ON THE GIFT OF A MEEKSCHAUM PIPE. [the pipe came safe, and welcome too, As anything must be from you; A meerschaum pure, 't would float as light As she the girls call Amphitrite. Mixture divine of foam and clay, From both it stole the best away : Its foam is such as crowns the glow Of beakers brimmed by Veuve Clicquot; Its clay is but congested lymph Jove chose to make some choicer nymph; And here combined, — why, this must be The birth of some enchanted sea, Shaped to immortal form, the type And very Venus of a pipe. When high I heap it with the weed From Lethe wharf, whose potent seed Nicotia, big from Bacchus, bore And cast upon Virginia's shore, I 'l1 think, — So fill the fairer bowl And wise alembic of thy soul, With herbs far-sought that shall distil, Not fumes to slacken thought and will, But bracing essences that nerve To wait, to dare, to strive, to serve. When curls the smoke in eddies soft, And hangs a shifting dream aloft, That gives and takes, though chance-designed, The impress of the dreamer's mind, I 'll think, — So let the vapors bred By Passion, in the heart or head, Pass off and upward into space, Waving farewells of tenderest grace, Remembered in some happier time, To blend their beauty with my rhyme. While slowly o'er its candid bowl The color deepens (as the soul That burns in mortals leaves its trace Of bale or beauty on the face), I 'll think, — So let the essence rare Of years consuming make me fair ; So, 'gainst the ills of life profuse, Steep me in some narcotic juice ; And if my soul must part with all That whiteness which we greenness call, Smooth back, O Fortune, half thy frown, And make me beautifully brown ! Dream-forger, I refill thy cup With reverie's wasteful pittance up, tO C.... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.