Come All Smokes Tobacco

Come all smokes tobacco, come pity my case.
I'm here on this island with not a damn taste.
The ice is blocked in, I'm driven with snow.
I'm in search of a leaf or to know where one grows.

It would turn my stomach what some people smoke:
It's birch rind and shavings and strands of old rope.
A good lump of pitch is much better to gnaw,
Puts a kink in your tooth and a twist in your jaw. 

Come all that smokes tea, it's the worst of all dirt.
It makes you right sleepy that you cannot work.
Upon my opinion a good cup of tea
Is much better to drink than to smoke it away.

Come all that smokes moss, the worst damn thing of all.
You see them dodging off with their bags in the fall.
If they'd leave it alone, it would keep cold outside,
But they only just making it fill up their pipes.

O the good God Almighty, look down from on high,
Send me down some tobacco or else I will die.
It's six weeks or better since I had a draw,
And I cannot remember when I had a chaw.

If the wind would come up, drive the ice out of here,
Then we get some tobacco come down from St. Pierre.
Then you'd see every man with his pipe in his gob,
And to hell with the shavings, old moss and birch wad.

Hedley Letto, Blanc Salon, P.Q. collected by Kenneth Goldstein