So in the village inn the poet dwelt. <br />His honey-dew was gone; only the pouch, <br />His cousin's work, her empty labour, left. <br />But still he sniffed it, still a fragrance clung <br />And lingered all about the broidered flowers. <br />Then came his landlord, saying in broad Scotch, <br />`Smoke plug, mon,' whom he looked at doubtfully. <br />Then came the grocer saying, `Hae some twist <br />At tippence,' whom he answered with a qualm. <br />But when they left him to himself again, <br />Twist, like a fiend's breath from a distant room <br />Diffusing through the passage, crept; the smell <br />Deepening had power upon him, and he mixt <br />His fancies with the billow-lifted bay <br />Of Biscay, and the rollings of a ship. <br /> <br />And on that night he made a little song, <br />And called his song `The Song of Twist and Plug,' <br />And sang it; scarcely could he make or sing. <br /> <br />`Rank is black plug, though smoked in wind and rain; <br />And rank is twist, which gives no end of pain; <br />I know not which is ranker, no, not I. <br /> <br />`Plug, art thou rank? then milder twist must be; <br />Plug, thou art milder: rank is twist to me. <br />O twist, if plug be milder, let me buy. <br /> <br />`Rank twist, that seems to make me fade away, <br />Rank plug, that navvies smoke in loveless clay, <br />I know not which is ranker, no, not I. <br /> <br />`I fain would purchase flake, if that could be; <br />I needs must purchase plug, ah, woe is me! <br />Plug and a cutty, a cutty, let me buy.<br /><br />Robert Fuller Murray<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-tennyson-fragment/
