My Books.

They 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 Molire,     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.