s crowned;
The berries crackle and the mill turns round;
On shining altars of Japan they raise
The silver lamp: the fiery spirits blaze:
From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide,
While China's earth receives the smoking tide.
At once they gratify their scent and taste.
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast
Straight hover round the fair her airy band;
Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquor fanned:
Some o'er her lap their careful plumes displayed,
Trembling, and conscious of the rich brocade.
Coffee (which makes the politician wise,
And see through all things with his half-shut eyes.)
Sent up in vapors to the baron's brain
New stratagems, the radiant lock to gain.

Pope often broke the slumbers of his servant at night by calling him to
prepare a cup of coffee; but for regular serving, it was his custom to
grind and to prepare it upon the table.

William Cowper's fine tribute to "the cups that cheer but not
inebriate", a phrase which he is said to have borrowed from Bishop
Berkeley, was addressed to tea and not to coffee, to which it has not
infrequently been wrongfully attributed. It is one of the most pleasing
pictures in _The Task_.

Cowper refers to coffee but once in his writings. In his _Pity for Poor
Africans_ he expresses himself as "shocked at the ignorance of slaves":

I pity them greatly, but I must be mum
For how could we do without sugar and rum?
Especially sugar, so needful we see;
What! Give up our desserts, our coffee and tea?

thus contenting himself, like many others, with words of pity where more
active protest might sacrifice his personal ease and comfort.

Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), and John Keats (1795-1834), were worshippers at
the shrine of coffee; while Charles Lamb, famous poet, essayist,
humorist, and critic, has celebrated in verse the exploit of Captain de
Clieu in the following delightful verses:

THE COFFEE SLIPS

Whene'er I fragrant coffee drink,
I on the generous Frenchman think,
Whose noble perseverance bore
The tree to Martinico's shore.
While yet her colony was new,
Her island products but a few;
Two shoots from off a coffee tree
He carried with him o'er the sea.
Each little tender coffee slip
He waters daily in the ship.
And as he tends his embryo trees.
Feels he is raising 'midst the seas
Coffee groves, whose ample shade
Shall screen the dark Creolian maid.
But soon, alas! His darling pleasure
In watching this his precious treasure
Is like to fade--for wat