Or our cosiest nook in the shade is Where Praed is, Or we toss the light bells of the mocker With Locker. Oh, the song where not one of the Graces Tight-laces,-- Where we woo the sweet Muses not starchly, But archly,-- 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! 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 Moliere, 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 BOOK-PLATE'S PETITION. BY A GENTLEMAN OF THE TEMPLE.