To The Book

Little Casket! Storehouse rare Of rich conceits, to please the Fair! Happiest he of mortal men,-- (I crown him monarch of the pen,)-- To whom Sophia deigns to give The flattering prerogative To inscribe his name in chief, On thy first and maiden Leaf. When thy pages shall be full Of what brighter wits can cull Of the Tender or Romantic, Creeping Prose or Verse Gigantic,-- Which thy spaces so shall cram That the Bee-like Epigram (Which a two-fold tribute brings, Honey gives at once, and stings,) Hath not room left wherewithal To infix its tiny scrawl; Haply some more youthful swain, Striving to describe his pain, And the Damsel's ear to seize With more expressive lays than these, When he finds his own excluded And these counterfeits intruded; While, loitering in the Muse's bower, He overstayed the eleventh hour, Till the tables filled--shall fret, Die, or sicken with regret Or into a shadow pine: While this triumphant verse of mine, Like to some favoured stranger-guest, Bidden to a good man's Feast Shall sit--by merit less than fate-- In the upper Seat in State.