TEA
  C.L. Gilman

From the faucets of the fountain and the bottles of the bar
I've tried many fancy gargles, 'most as many as there are,
But the drink that's first and foremost, if you put it up to me,
Is the scalding can of ashes, swamp-juice, soot—and tea.

At the take-off of the portage, when a man is damp with toil,
Heat and deer-flies are forgotten, when the tea comes to a boil.
In the silent winter muskeg, where the snow has hid the trail,
Strength and hope and courage wait him with the bubbling of the pail.

Propped with rocks beside the rapids, jabbed into the forest mould,
Smoked and scorched, ten thousand tea-sticks, mark the camp-sites of the bold.
Other drinks may please the townsman, do to flirt with now and then,
But, the Silent Places witness, tea's the drink that's drunk by men.

Source: Camp-Fire Verse; ed. Williams Haynes and Joseph Leroy Harrison; Duffield & Company, New York, 1917.