Explore "The Scarlet Gown: THE BANISHED BEJANT FROM THE UNPUBLISHED REMAINS OF EDGAR ALLAN POE" by Robert Fuller Murray on Textopian.
In vain you fervently extol, / In vain you puff, your cutty clay. / A twelvemonth smoked and black as coal, / 'Tis redolent of rank decay / And bones of monks long passed away -- / A fragrance I do not admire; / And so I hold my nose and say, / Give me a finely seasoned briar.
Macleod, whose judgment on the whole / Is faultless, has been led astray / To nurse a high-born meerschaum bowl, / For which he sweetly had to pay. / Ah, let him nurse it as he may, / Before the colour mounts much higher, / The grate shall be its fate one day. / Give me a finely seasoned briar.