Dusting my books I spent a busy day: <br />Not ancient toes, time-hallowed and unread, <br />but modern volumes, classics in their way, <br />whose makers now are numbered with the dead; <br />Men of a generation more than mine, <br />With whom I tattled, battled and drank wine. <br /> <br />I worshipped them, rejoiced in their success, <br />Grudging them not the gold that goes with fame. <br />I thought them near-immortal, I confess, <br />And naught could dim the glory of each name. <br />How I perused their pages with delight! . . . <br />To-day I peer with sadness in my sight. <br /> <br />For, death has pricked each to a flat balloon. <br />A score of years have gone, they're clean forgot. <br />Who would have visioned such a dreary doom? <br />By God! I'd like to burn the blasted lot. <br />Only, old books are mighty hard to burn: <br />They char, they flicker and their pages turn. <br /> <br />And as you stand to poke them in the flame, <br />You see a living line that stabs the heart. <br />Brave writing that! It seems a cursed shame <br />That to a bonfire it should play it's part. <br />Poor book! You're crying, and you're not alone: <br />Some day someone will surely burn my own. <br /> <br />No, I will dust my books and put them by, <br />Yet never look into their leaves again; <br />For scarce a soul remembers them save I, <br />Re-reading them would only give me pain. <br />So I will sigh, and say with curling lip: <br />Futility! Thy name is authorship.<br /><br />Robert William Service<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/futility-3/
