Page 32 - Poetry-Books

Ballade of Poor Book-Worms

The book-stall on the corner bleak,
Its grinning keeper knows us well;
As we pass by we never speak,
But often linger for a spell.
We ken the kernel by the shell,
And oft our slender purse is led
Its grudging silver down to tell:
Books we must have though we lack bread!

Great stores we pass with glance oblique—
Our coins their coffers seldom swell;
We wend to second-hand shop meek:
We heed not dust, nor dirt, nor smell.
The creaking door a cracked old bell
Sets jangling, and the hinge is red
With rust, but bargains here they sell:
Books we must have though we lack bread!
We haunt book auctions week by week;
Sweet music to our ears is yell
Of “Going, going,” and the shriek
Of “Gone!”—since unto us it fell,
“Lot 3.” One cast us down to hell
With Dante, one to heaven sped
Our souls—his namesake’s Damozel:
Books we must have though we lack bread!

ENVOI.
Love, when our plenishing we’d seek,
We bought the bookcase ere the bed;
And this is still the purse’s leak:
Books we must have though we lack bread!

— Alice Williams Brotherton (Century Magazine, 1896)

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