My Books

Austin Dobson. From ‘At the Sign of the Lyre.’ 1885.

They dwell in the odor of camphor,
They stand in a Sheraton shrine,
They are “warranted early editions,”
These worshipful tomes of mine;—

In their creamy “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 Bedford’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 ones I read.