182 MUSINGS OVER A PIPE. 



What country gave it birth? What blest of cities 

 Saw it first kindle at the glowing coal? 

 What happy artist murmured " Nunc dimittis," 

 When he had fashioned this transcendent bowl ! 



Has it been hoarded in a monarch's treasures? 

 Was it a gift of peace, or price of war? 

 Did the great Khalif in his " Houre of Pleasures," 

 Wager and lose it to the good Zaafar? 

 i 



It may have soothed mild Spenser's melancholy, 

 While musing o'er traditions of the past, 

 Or graced the lips of brave Sir Walter Raleigh, 

 Ere sage King Jamie blew his " Counterblast." 



Did it, safe hidden in some secret cavern, 

 Escape that monarch's pipoclastic ken? 

 Has Shakespeare smoked it at the Mermaid Tavern, 

 Quaffing a cup of sack with rare old Ben? 



Ay, Shakespeare might have watched his vast creation 

 Loom through its smoke the spectre-haunted Thane, 

 The Sisters at their ghostly invocations, 

 The jealous Moor and melancholy Dane. 



Round its orbed haze and through its mazy ringlets, 



Titania may have led her elfin rout, 



Or Ariel fanned it with his gauzy winglets, 



Or Puck danced in the bowl to put it out. 



Vain are all fancies questions bring no answer; 

 The smokers vanish, but the pipe remains ; 

 He were indeed a subtle necromancer, 

 Could read their records in its cloudy stains. 



Nor this alone : its destiny may doom it 

 To outlive e'en its use and history 

 Some ploughman of the future may exhume it 

 From soil now deep beneath the eastern sea. 



And, treasured by some antiquarian Stultas, 

 It may to gaping visitors be shown, 

 Labelled : " The symbol of some ancient Cultus, 

 Conjecturally Phallic, but unknown." 



Why do I thus recall the ancient quarrel 



'Twixt Man and Time, that marks all earthly things? 



