Plague take all your pedants, say I! He who wrote what I hold in my hand, Centuries back was so good as to die, Leaving this rubbish to cumber the land; This, that was a book in its time, Printed on paper and bound in leather, Last month in the white of a matin-prime Just when the birds sang all together. Into the garden I brought it to read, And under the arbute and laurustine Read it, so help me grace in my need, From title-page to closing line. Chapter on chapter did I count, As a curious traveller counts Stonehenge; Added up the mortal amount; And then proceeded to my revenge. Yonder's a plum-tree, with a crevice An owl would build in, were he but sage; For a lap of moss like a fine pontlevis In a castle of the middle age, Joins to a lip of gum, pure amber; Where he'd be private, there might he spend Hours alone in his lady's chamber: Into this crevice I dropped our friend. Splash went he, as under he ducked, --I knew at the bottom rain-drippings stagnate; Next a handful of blossoms I plucked To bury him with, my bookshelf's magnate; Then I went indoors, brought out a loaf, Half a cheese, and a bottle of Chablis; Lay on the grass and forgot the oaf Over a jolly chapter of Rabelais. Now, this morning, betwixt the moss And gum that locked our friend in limbo, A spider had spun his web across, And sate in the midst with arms a-kimbo: So, I took pity, for learning's sake, And, _de profundis, accentibus laetis, Cantate_! quoth I, as I got a rake, And up I fished his delectable treatise. Here you have it, dry in the sun, With all the binding all of a blister, And great blue spots where the ink has run, And reddish streaks that wink and glister O'er the page so beautifully yellow-- Oh, well have the droppings played their tricks! Did he guess how toadstools grow, this fellow? Here's one stuck in his chapter six! How did he like it when the live creatures Tickled and toused and browsed him all over, And worm, slug, eft, with serious features, Came in, each one, for his right of trover; When the water-beetle with great blind deaf face Made of her eggs the stately deposit, And the newt borrowed just so much of the preface As tiled in the top of his black wife's closet. All that life, and fun, and romping, All that frisking, and twisting, and coupling, While slowly our poor friend's leaves were swamping, And clasps were cracking, and covers suppling! As if you had carried sour John Knox To the play-house at Paris, Vienna, or Munich, Fastened him into a front-row box, And danced off the Ballet with trousers and tunic.