Why I have started smoking a pipe

OK, terrible poetry, but it sums up the feeling ...

A Refuge

From A Smoker's Reveries, Joseph Knight, ed., 1909

There's a still, cosey nook, with a novel or two,
And a generous armchair that beckons to rest,
And a jar of tobacco, whose wealth I may strew,
In and over the bowl of the pipe I like best.
And there, where the incense of indolence burns,
Above the big armchair, the pipe and the book,
It seems that life's labours, its devious turns,
But lead, after all, to this still, cosey nook.

The noise of the world babbles distant and soft,
And the cannon's dull rattle, the trumpet's rude blare,
Would mellow, should War hurl his banner aloft,
For gentleness only can penetrate there.
'Tis a spot that was ever a stranger to fear;
A shelter 'gainst fate where no storms ever shook,
And the hours are my comrades, who whisper of cheer,
With the generous armchair, the pipe and the book.