• Herba Sancta
• I
• After long wars when comes release
• Not olive wands proclaiming peace
• Can import dearer share
• Than stems of Herba Santa hazed
• In autumn’s Indian air.
• Of moods they breathe that care disarm,
• They pledge us lenitive and calm.

• II
• Shall code or creed a lure afford
• To win all selves to Love’s accord?
• When Love ordained a supper divine
• For the wide world of man,
• What bickerings o’er his gracious wine!
• Then strange new feuds began.

• Effectual more in lowlier way,
• Pacific Herb, thy sensuous plea
• The bristling clans of Adam sway
• At least to fellowship in thee!
• Before thine altar tribal flags are furled,
• Fain wouldst thou make one hearthstone of the world.

• III
• To scythe, to sceptre, pen and hod—
• Yea, sodden laborers dumb;
• To brains overplied, to feet that plod,
• In solace of the Truce of God
• The Calumet has come!

• IV
• Ah for the world ere Raleigh’s find
• Never that knew this suasive balm
• That helps when Gilead’s fails to heal,
• Helps by an interserted charm.

• Insinuous thou that through the nerve
• Windest the soul, and so canst win
• Some from repinings, some from sin,
• The Church’s aim thou dost subserve.

• The ruffled fag fordone with care
• And brooding, God would ease this pain:
• Him soothest thou and smoothest down
• Till some content return again.

• Even ruffians feel thy influence breed
• Saint Martin’s summer in the mind,
• They feel this last evangel plead,
• As did the first, apart from creed,
• Be peaceful, man—be kind!

• V
• Rejected once on higher plain,
• O Love supreme, to come again
• Can this be thine?
• Again to come, and win us too
• In likeness of a weed
• That as a god didst vainly woo,
• As man more vainly bleed?

• VI
• Forbear, my soul! and in thine Eastern chamber
• Rehearse the dream that brings the long release:
• Through jasmine sweet and talismanic amber
• Inhaling Herba Santa in the passive Pipe of Peace. 

Herman Melville

Herman Melville (1819–1891) was an American writer, known best for his novels – including Moby Dick, which has consistently been short-listed among critics as a candidate for the Great American Novel. Taking to sea after his family met with financial ruin, Melville often wrote in his fiction and poetry about the sea and the exotic discoveries of his voyages, as reflected in this paean to tobacco. After all of his major fiction (except for the posthumously published Billy Budd) was published, Melville took up poetry as the main expression of his talent. While in many ways traditional in form, he also wrote several experimental poems, including his long poem, Clarel, an account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land as a way to reconcile the ways of God to man – and vice versa. His verse, while not originally well-received, was after Melville’s death recognized by critics and poets alike as accomplished and, devoid of the usual ornament of poetry written at the time, even hinted at style employed by the Modernist movement in late 19th and early 20th century poetry.