[Anonymous; 16^th-century English]

A Religious Use of Taking Tobacco

 

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.

 

But when the pipe grows foul within,

Think of thy soul defiled with sin.

And that the fire

Doth it require:

Thus think, then drink tobacco.

 

The ashes that are left behind,

May serve to put thee still in mind

That into dust

Return thou must:

Thus think, then drink tobacco.

 

[Taken from Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine, eds., Six Centuries of Great Poetry from Chaucer to Yeats.  NY: Dell, 1955, p. 72.]

This poem picks up on a figure of speech -- "All flesh is hay" -- that was the basis for a common allegorical subject of paintings during the 16th Century.