MY BOOKS.

Not a valuable set,
Does it follow therefore
That I may not have a pet
Book or two to care for?
Tell me, does a man of sense
Judge of books by their expense?

How, alas! can I afford
Precious vellum covers
Stamped with badge of prince or lord
Or of royal lovers?
Long must be their purse who gain
Specimens of Roger Payne.

Some begin but never end,
Some have no beginning,
Some are tattered and transcend
All the arts of pinning.
Children love with love most warm
Dolls with least of human form.

Some are clean, the average
Are a trifle dirty,
Time is apt to soil a page
Say of sixteen-thirty.
Shall I value comrades less
For their unbecoming dress?

Some are Latin, some are Greek,
Some are French and Spanish,
One or two can even speak
Portuguese or Danish.
(Names of nations must at times
Be content with "printers' rimes.")

Here is farce or comedy,
Here grave verse like Dante's,
Bacon or Pascal may be
Neighbours of Cervantes;
Books like strangers in a street
Know not whom they chance to meet.

Delicate Italian charm,
Sagas grim from Sweden,
Songs that breathe a holy calm
Like the calm of Eden,
Scarce a page that has not taught
Something worthy to be thought.

Most of them are of the past,
Of a bygone fashion,
Some of them are deeply cast
In a mould of passion,
Others treat the world and men
With a Rabelaisian pen.

Many a book of olden time
Opens with a sonnet,
Once no work appeared but rime
Must be written on it,
'Twas no credit to compose
Flatteries in humble prose.

Comrades, let me dwell with you,
Hear your sobs and laughter,
Men have never been as true,
Will they be hereafter?
None knows solitude who spends
Life with books when books are friends.