I keep collecting books I know
I’ll never, never read;
My wife and daughter tell me so,
And yet I never head.
“Please make me,” says some wistful tome,
“A wee bit of yourself.”
And so I take my treasure home,
And tuck it in a shelf.
And now my very shelves complain;
They jam and over-spill.
They say: “Why don’t you ease our strain?”
“some day,” I say, “I will.”
So book by book they plead and sigh;
I pick and dip and scan;
Then put them back, distrest that I
Am such a busy man.
Now, there’s my Boswell and my Sterne,
my Gibbon and Defoe;
To savour Swift I’ll never learn,
Montaigne I may not know.
On Bacon I will never sup,
For Shakespeare I’ve no time;
Because I’m busy making up
These jingly bits of rhyme.
Chekov is caviare to me,
While Stendhal makes me snore;
Poor Proust is not my cup of tea,
And Balzac is a bore.
I have their books, I love their names,
And yet alas! they head,
With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James,
My Roster of Unread.
I think it would be very well
If I commit a crime,
And get put in a prison cell
And not allowed to rhyme;
Yet given all these worthy books
According to my need,
I now caress with loving looks,
But never, never read.
(Robert William Service)
More Poetry from Robert William Service:
Robert William Service Poems based on Topics: Man, Time, Home, Books, Tea, Education, Crime, Boredom, Learning- Fighting Mac (Robert William Service Poems)
- If You Had The Choice Of Two Women To Wed (Robert William Service Poems)
- (The sunshine seeks my little room) (Robert William Service Poems)
- Willie (Robert William Service Poems)
- Milking Time (Robert William Service Poems)
- The Widow (Robert William Service Poems)
Readers Who Like This Poem Also Like:
Based on Topics: Man Poems, Time Poems, Home Poems, Education Poems, Books Poems, Learning Poems, Crime Poems, Boredom Poems, Tea PoemsBased on Keywords: distrest, tome, collecting, unread, snore, tuck, sterne, joyce, proust, defoe, montaigne