Transcribed from the 1887 Longmans, Green, and Co. edition by David
Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BOOKS
AND
BOOKMEN
BY
ANDREW LANG
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1887
_All rights reserved_
_To_
_THE VISCOUNTESS WOLSELEY_.
MADAME, it is no modish thing,
The bookman’s tribute that I bring;
A talk of antiquaries grey,
Dust unto dust this many a day,
Gossip of texts and bindings old,
Of faded type, and tarnish’d gold!
_Can ladies care for this to-do_
_With Payne_, _Derome_, _and Padeloup_?
_Can they resign the rout_, _the ball_,
_For lonely joys of shelf and stall_?
The critic thus, serenely wise;
But you can read with other eyes,
Whose books and bindings treasured are
’Midst mingled spoils of peace and war;
Shields from the fights the Mahdi lost,
And trinkets from the Golden Coast,
And many things divinely done
By Chippendale and Sheraton,
And trophies of Egyptian deeds,
And fans, and plates, and Aggrey beads,
Pomander boxes, assegais,
And sword-hilts worn in Marlbro’s days.
In this pell-mell of old and new,
Of war and peace, my essays, too,
For long in serials tempest-tost,
Are landed now, and are not lost:
Nay, on your shelf secure they lie,
As in the amber sleeps the fly.
’Tis true, they are not “rich nor rare;”
Enough, for me, that they are—there!
A. L