A smoking pipe rests in a teacup and saucer beside lace gloves on dark red cloth.

Original artwork, not a still

A Farewell to Tobacco

Charles Lamb

For thy sake, tobacco, I Would do anything but die.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Lamb's speaker is bidding tobacco a mock-tender goodbye. He swears he'd do anything for it, with one exception: dying. That neat limit makes the devotion sound both passionate and comically self-preserving, as if a habit were a lover.

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