Look, these are “the tiniest scraps,” you see, And this is their casket of filigree, That I bought that year “far over the sea,” With a volley of chaff, and a half-rupee, From a huckstering, fox-faced Bengalee, That set himself up for a dealer. They have slept with me by the jungle fires, They have watch’d with me under Indian spires, I have kept them safe in their gilded wires From the clutch of the coolie stealer; And when at last they relieved “the Nest,”— Alick, and Ellis, and all the rest,— March’d into Lucknow four abreast, That I had the chips still under my vest, That they pray’d with me, must be confess’d, Who never was much of a kneeler. And now that I come, and I find you free, You, that have waken’d this thing in me, Will you tell me, Florence, whether, When I kept your pencil’s chips that day, Was it better perhaps to have let them stay To be lost in the mountain heather! CHIPS. CHIPS! It may be well disputed If a word exists, less suited, Or more odd and uninviting As a theme for rhyme or writing; Coinage of that dull Max Müller, Title of a book still duller. Fill’d with words so cabalistic, That methought the German mystic Must have found the dialect Spoken ere man walk’d erect. Never mind! what must be, must; Men must eat both crumb and crust. And the dodge of many a poet (Half the verses publish’d show it), When his Pegasus rides restive, Is to make his _rhymes_ suggestive. If in what you chance to seize on Rhyme and reason will not chime, Better rhyme without the reason Than the reason and no rhyme; Better anything than prose, So, as Milton says, “here goes.” “When the Grecian chiefs in ships Sail’d on Argonautic trips!” “When the Furies with their whips Flogg’d Orestes all to strips! “When the sun in dim eclipse In the darken’d ocean dips!” Still I see no clue to chips! “Meadows where the lambkin skips, Where the dew from roses drips And the bee the honey sips . . . .” Odd, that nothing leads to chips! Then I thought of “cranks and quips,” Wanton wiles and laughing lips, Luring us to fatal slips, And leaving us in Satan’s grips. Then I made a desperate trial, With the sixth and seventh vial— Thinking I could steal some Chips From St. John’s Apocalypse. Then there came a long hiatus, While I kept repeating Chips, Feeling the divine afflatus Oozing through my finger-tips. Gone and going hopelessly, So, in my accustom’d manner, Underneath my favourite tree, I began a mild havannah— ’Twas indeed my favourite station, For recruiting mind and body; Drinking draughts of inspiration, Alternate with whisky toddy. ’Twas an oak tree old and hoary. And my garden’s pride and glory; Hallow’d trunk and boughs in splinters, Mossy with a thousand winters.