Joseph Knight’s 1895 Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry is, unsurprisingly a compilation of poetry related to tobacco. Knight writes in the preface, “A vast amount has been written in praise of tobacco, much of it commonplace or lacking in poetic quality. While some of the verse here gathered is an obvious echo, or passes into unmistakable parody, it has been the aim of the compiler to maintain, as far as possible, a high standard and include only the best.”
If you’re a fan of poetry and a fan of tobacco, you should read this book. One trend I’ve noticed when it comes to cigars is that we tend to trot out the same small set of quotations for every circumstance: “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar1”, “Gentlemen, you may smoke2”, “Some people meditate, I smoke cigars3”, etc. You know them, you’ve heard them. There are all kinds of other types of quotes we could use, some of them from poetry. Here are a few verses pulled from this book that you could use instead:
“As I puff this mild Havana, and its ashes slowly lengthen,
I feel my courage gather and my resolution strengthen:
I will smoke, and I will praise you, my cigar, and I will light you
With tobacco-phobic pamphlets by the learned prigs who fight you!”
-Arthur W. Gundry, My Cigar
“Tobacco, sacred herb, though lowly,
Baffles old Time, the tyrant, wholly,
And makes him turn his hour-glass slowly”
James Russell Lowell, An Ode of Thanks for Certain Cigars
“Life’s review in smoke goes past, –
Fickle fortune, stubborn fate,
Right discovered all too late,
Beings loved and gone before,
Beings loved but friends no more,
Self-reproach and futile sighs,
Vanity in birth that dies,
Longing, heart-break, adoration, –
Nothing sure in expectation
Save ash-receiver at the last.”
-Irving Browne, The Smoke Traveller
“Strange memories of life or death
Up from the cradle to the shroud
Come forth as, with enchanter’s breath,
I blow my after-dinner cloud.”
-Henry S. Leigh, My After-Dinner Cloud
“Some sigh for this and that,
My wishes don’t go far;
The world may wag at will,
So I have my cigar.”
Thomas Hood, The Cigar
Pipe and Pouch: The Smoker’s Own Book of Poetry is in the public domain and can be read for free on Project Gutenberg.