Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907.

A Religious Use of Taking Tobacco

Robert Wisdome (d. 1568)

THE INDIAN weed witherèd quite;

Green at morn, cut down at night;

Shows thy decay; all flesh is hay:

Thus think, then drink Tobacco.

And when the smoke ascends on high,

Think thou behold’st the vanity

Of worldly stuff; gone with a puff:

Thus think, then drink Tobacco.

The ashes that are left behind,

May serve to put thee still in mind,

That unto dust return thou must:

Thus think, then drink Tobacco.