I keep collecting books I know <br />I'll never, never read; <br />My wife and daughter tell me so, <br />And yet I never head. <br />"Please make me," says some wistful tome, <br />"A wee bit of yourself." <br />And so I take my treasure home, <br />And tuck it in a shelf. <br /> <br />And now my very shelves complain; <br />They jam and over-spill. <br />They say: "Why don't you ease our strain?" <br />"some day," I say, "I will." <br />So book by book they plead and sigh; <br />I pick and dip and scan; <br />Then put them back, distrest that I <br />Am such a busy man. <br /> <br />Now, there's my Boswell and my Sterne, <br />my Gibbon and Defoe; <br />To savour Swift I'll never learn, <br />Montaigne I may not know. <br />On Bacon I will never sup, <br />For Shakespeare I've no time; <br />Because I'm busy making up <br />These jingly bits of rhyme. <br /> <br />Chekov is caviare to me, <br />While Stendhal makes me snore; <br />Poor Proust is not my cup of tea, <br />And Balzac is a bore. <br />I have their books, I love their names, <br />And yet alas! they head, <br />With Lawrence, Joyce and Henry James, <br />My Roster of Unread. <br /> <br />I think it would be very well <br />If I commit a crime, <br />And get put in a prison cell <br />And not allowed to rhyme; <br />Yet given all these worthy books <br />According to my need, <br />I now caress with loving looks, <br />But never, never read.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/book-lover/
