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.