FAITHFUL companion of my wanderings By river, road, and mountain: quickener Of contemplation: comrade, who with me Hast seen on Alpine pinnacles the dawn Rubescent, and in lucubration late Outwatched Orion: fare thee well, my Pipe -- Neglectfully beside the dusty road Abandoned! where the weary wayfarer Halting, from Chiltern's beech-immantled height Sees through a waving tracery of leaves The misty plain Oxonian: there thou liest ... Blame not thy heedless master: rather blame The star and black malevolence of Fate Which all that day hung o'er me, till at eve Some jagged flint my swift-revolving tire, Transpiercing, crippled: yet e'en that mishap I bore more lightly than the loss of thee. Perchance some tramp thy black but comely form Hath ravished, and among his beery mates Exhibits in a wayside public-house A godsend: where thy sad reluctant maw, Thy sheeny bowl wherein I took delight, With horrid shag or villainous returns He gorges -- all unworthy of his prize, And knowing not the academic care Wherewith thou once wert tended: now, alas! Remembering oft thy comfortable home And studious lair 'mid miscellaneous books, Thou must associate with common clays, Old broken clays, and beastly pots of beer. Perish the thought! but with the advancing spring May thickening grass and fronds of spreading fern Protect thee from the spoiler: till perchance Returning thither on a luckier day I find thee 'neath the covert, and restore Thy interrupted honours: once again To deck my room, a patriarch of pipes. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BANKS O' DOON by ROBERT BURNS SPANISH WINGS: A LEAF FROM A LOG BOOK by H. BABCOCK IN AND OUT OF CHURCH by LOUISA SARAH BEVINGTON THE SHRINE by HARRY RANDOLPH BLYTHE THE VIADUCT by GORDON BOTTOMLEY THE FIRSTBORN by ARCHIBALD YOUNG CAMPBELL THE GLORY OF THE GAME by WILLIAM HAMILTON CLINE TO A FRIEND, TOGETHER WITH AN UNFINISHED POEM by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE |