I Smoke My Pipe

I can't extend to every friend In need a helping hand-- No matter though I wish it so, 'Tis not as Fortune planned; But haply may I fancy they Are men of different stripe Than others think who hint and wink,-- And so--I smoke my pipe! A golden coal to crown the bowl-- My pipe and I alone,-- I sit and muse with idler views Perchance than I should own:-- It might be worse to own the purse Whose glutted bowels gripe In little qualms of stinted alms; And so I smoke my pipe. And if inclined to moor my mind And cast the anchor Hope, A puff of breath will put to death The morbid misanthrope That lurks inside--as errors hide In standing forms of type To mar at birth some line of worth; And so I smoke my pipe. The subtle stings misfortune flings Can give me little pain When my narcotic spell has wrought This quiet in my brain: When I can waste the past in taste So luscious and so ripe That like an elf I hug myself; And so I smoke my pipe. And wrapped in shrouds of drifting clouds, I watch the phantom's flight, Till alien eyes from Paradise Smile on me as I write: And I forgive the wrongs that live, As lightly as I wipe Away the tear that rises here; And so I smoke my pipe.