Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Sentiment: II. Life

The Indian Weed

Anonymous (Seventeenth Century)

THIS Indian weed, now withered quite,

Though green at noon, cut down at night,

Shows thy decay,—

All flesh is hay:

Thus think, and drink tobacco.

The pipe, so lily-like and weak,

Does thus thy mortal state bespeak;

Thou art e’en such,—

Gone with a touch:

Thus think, and drink tobacco.

And when the smoke ascends on high,

Then thou behold’st the vanity

Of worldly stuff,—

Gone with a puff:

Thus think, and drink tobacco.

And when the pipe grows foul within,

Think on thy soul defiled with sin;

For then the fire

It does require:

Thus think, and drink tobacco.

And seest the ashes cast away,

Then to thyself thou mayest say

That to the dust

Return thou must:

Thus think, and drink tobacco.