A PIPE OF TOBACCO: IN IMΙΤΑΤΙON OF SIX SEVERAL AUTHORS. Mr. Hawkins Browne, the author of these, as I am told, had no good original manner of his own, yet we fee how well he fucceeds when he turns an imitator; for the following are rather imitations, than ridiculous parodies. ΙΜΙΤΑΤΙΟΝ Ι. ANEW-YEAR's ODE. RECITATIVE. LD battle-array, big with horror, is fled, Sing, ye Muses, Tobacco, the blessing of peace; AIR. When summer funs grow red with heat, Yellow Yellow Autumn, youthful Spring, In thy praises jointly fing. RECITATIVE. Like Neptune, Cæfar guards Virginian fleets, Old Ocean trembles at Britannia's pow'r, AIR. Happy mortal, he! who knows Pleasure which a Pipe bestows; Curling eddies climb the room, Wafting round a mild perfume. RECITATIVE. Let foreign climes the vine and orange boast, AIR. Smiling years, that gayly run Tell, if ever you have seen British sons no longer, now, Nor Nor of crimson combat think, CHORUS. Smiling years, that gayly run : : IMITATION ΙΜΙΤΑΤΙΟΝ II. L ITTLE tube, of mighty power, Object of my warm defire, When again the cricket's gay, IMITATION IMITATION III. THOU, matur'd by glad Hesperian suns, Tobacco! fountain pure of limpid truth, That looks the very foul; whence pouring thought Swarms all the mind; abforpt is yellow care; And at each puff imagination burns. Flash on thy bard, and, with exalting fires, Touch the mysterious lip that chaunts thy praise, In strains to mortal fons of earth unknown. Behold an engine, wrought from tauny mines Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue form'd, And glaz'd magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill. From Pætotheke with pungent pow'rs perfum'd, Itself one tortoise all, where shines imbib'd Each parent ray; then rudely ram'd illume, With the red touch of zeal-enkindling sheet, Mark'd with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds, Thought-thrilling, thirst-inciting clouds around, And many-mining fires: I all the while, Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm. But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join, In genial strife and orthodoxal ale, Stream life and joy into the Muses' bowl. O be thou still my great inspirer, thou My Muse; oh fan me with thy zephyrs boon, While I, in clouded tabernacle shrin'd, Burst forth all oracle and mystic fong. VOL. I. N IMITATION |