Today’s Poem: Ode To Tobacco

Smith, take a fresh cigar! / Jones, the tobacco jar!

Adriaen Brouwer, The Smokers, c. 1636 (Wikimedia Commons)

Ode To Tobacco

by Charles Stuart Calverley

Thou, who when fears attack
Bidst them avaunt, and Black
Care, at the horseman’s back
Perching, unseatest;
Sweet when the morn is gray;
Sweet when they’ve cleared away
Lunch; and at close of day
Possibly sweetest!

I have a liking old
For thee, though manif…