Where the verse, like a piper a-Maying, Comes playing,

And the rhyme is as gay as a dancer, In answer,

It will last till men weary of pleasure

In measure!

It will last till men weary of laughter.

And after !

THE

MY BOOKS

HEY dwell in the odour of camphor, They stand in a Sheraton shrine, They are "warranted early editions," These worshipful tomes of mine ;

In their creamiest "Oxford vellum,"
In their redolent "crushed Levant,"
With their delicate watered linings,

They are jewels of price, I grant ;

Blind-tooled and morocco-jointed,

They have Zaehnsdorf's daintiest dress, They are graceful, attenuate, polished, But they gather the dust, no less ;

For the row that I prize is yonder,
Away on the unglazed shelves,
The bulged and the bruised octavos,

The dear and the dumpy twelves,—

Montaigne with his sheepskin blistered,
And Howell the worse for wear,
And the worm-drilled Jesuits' Horace,
And the little old cropped Molière,

And the Burton I bought for a florin, And the Rabelais foxed and flea'd,For the others I never have opened, But those are the books I read.

✔ THE COLLECTOR TO HIS LIBRARY

BROWN Books of mine, who never yet

Have caused me anguish or regret,—
Save when some fiend in human shape
Has set your tender sides agape,
Or soiled with some unmanly smear
The candour of your margin clear,
Or writ you with some phrase inane,
The bantling of an idle brain,-
I love you and because must end
This commerce between friend and friend,
I do implore each kindly Fate-
To each and all I supplicate-

That you, whom I have loved so long,
May not be vended "for a song"
That you, my dear desire and care,
May 'scape the common thoroughfare,
The dust, the eating rain, and all
The shame and squalor of the Stall.
Rather I trust your lot may touch
Some Croesus-if there should be such-
To buy you, and that you may so
From Croesus unto Crœsus go
Till that inevitable day

When comes your moment of decay.

This, more than other good, I pray.

THE BOOK-PLATE'S PETITION

BY A GENTLEMAN of tTHE TEMPLE

WHILE

7HILE cynic CHARLES still trimm'd
the vane

"Twixt Querouaille and Castlemaine,
In days that shocked JOHN EVELYN,
My First Possessor fixed me in.
In days of Dutchmen and of frost,
The narrow sea with JAMES I cross'd,
Returning when once more began
The Age of Saturn and of ANNE.
I am a part of all the past:

I knew the GEORGES, first and last;
I have been oft where else was none
Save the great wig of ADDISON ;
And seen on shelves beneath me grope
The little eager form of POPE.

I lost the Third that owned me when
French NOAILLES fled at Dettingen ;
The year JAMES WOLFE surprised Quebec,
The Fourth in hunting broke his neck;
The day that WILLIAM HOGARTH dy'd,
The Fifth one found me in Cheapside.
! This was a Scholar, one of those
Whose Greek is sounder than their hose;