Pipe Poetry

Just found another Robert W Service pipe poem:

An Ancient gaffer once I knew,
Who puffed a pipe and tossed a tankard;
He claimed a hundred years or two,
And for a dozen more he hankered;
So o'er a pint I asked how he
Had kept his timbers tight together;
He grinned and answered: "It maun be
Because I likes all kinds o' weather.

"Fore every morn when I get up
I lights my clay pipe wi' a cinder,
And as me mug o' tea I sup
I looks from out the cottage winder;
And if it's shade or if it's shine
Or wind or snow befit to freeze me,
I always say: 'Well, now that's fine...
It's just the sorto' day to please me.'

"For I have found it wise in life
To take the luck the way it's coming;
A wake, a worry or a wife -
Just carry on and keep a-humming.
And so I lights me pipe o' clay,
And through the morn on blizzard borders,
I chuckle in me guts and say:
'It's just the day the doctor orders.'"

A mighty good philosophy
Thought I, and leads to longer living,
To make the best of things that be,
And take the weather of God's giving;
So though the sky be ashen grey,
And winds be edged and sleet be slanting,
Heap faggots on the fire and say:
"It's just the kind of day I'm wanting."

Good stuff. I like this kind of poetry.

I follow Malcolm Guide myself. He is well knowledged on all forms of poetry and quite a poet himself. Not to mention a collector of Peterson Sherlock Holmes pipes. 

Here you go. This is from someone who calls himself Warrior Poet.

Smoke From The Pipe
The fire lit is bright,
As a lamp within the abyss;
It ignites the contents
Of the wooden chamber;

Smoke slowly escapes the contraption,
Designed to guide its flow;
Into the bags of flesh
That only fresh air have called home;

It swirls inside with no escape
Before it is slowly & gently removed;
Smoke now escapes into the air,
Dispersing, never to be seen again;

Inside the little fire dies
Leaving behind a pile of ash;
Fresh air is again acquainted
Into the passage of which air flows;

The taste that is left behind
Is a burning that cannot be quenched;
Calmness now sweeps over
Bringing a cool feeling;

Thoughts were much clearer
Than the mist that was once breathed;
Now they are scattered,
Similar to the smoke that had left;

Fearing that this feeling is but a dream
and praying that it will last;
But no sadness shall be felt
When the pipe is no longer lit;
For all things must conclude
And the briefness of existence celebrated.

Sweet is the Rose's scent—Tobacco's smell

Is sweeter; wherefore let me charge again.

Old blackened meerschaum, I have loved thee well

From youth, when smoke brought sickness in its train.

Foolish I was: Manillas I disdained,

And cigarettes to Burmahs did prefer,

And even spumed Havana's fragrant joy;

But now my mind is pained,

In that my smoking days I did defer,

Nor knew this pleasure when I was a boy.


Kipling

Here is another Kipling, though on cigars. We have a cigar club here locally, and one of the lines of the poem is our motto.

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 Manilla,—­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 twelve-month clear.
But I have been Priest of Partagas 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!

RUDYARD KIPLING.

You have got it down man. You know how to do this stuff.

Like they yell at the end of a concert: "more". 

I am like Salieri, I can recognise a good poem and a great poem, and distinguish between. But I cannot write a poem that interests even me.

The dusk is calm.
My pipe smoke
Clings close.

(Reading too much Samurai history lately.)

Nice.

These are amazing!