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A BOOKWORM'S CONFESSION
E'en in my youth I knew the bookworm's passion;
I felt it ere I well had learned to read:
While cakes and sweets my comrades spent their cash on,
I to the bookshop with my pence would speed.
I felt it ere I well had learned to read:
While cakes and sweets my comrades spent their cash on,
I to the bookshop with my pence would speed.
Ever the passion more and more controlled me,
Absorbing all my thoughts, my cash, my time;
'Twas vain, for parents or for friends to scold me,
My ears were shut to reason or to rhyme.
Absorbing all my thoughts, my cash, my time;
'Twas vain, for parents or for friends to scold me,
My ears were shut to reason or to rhyme.
More than the fondest lover loves the maiden
Whose spell is on him ne'er to be o'erthrown,
I loved my books, which gratefully repaid in
A thousand ways the favour to them shown.
Whose spell is on him ne'er to be o'erthrown,
I loved my books, which gratefully repaid in
A thousand ways the favour to them shown.
Old tomes I love most with their time-worn covers,
Quaint printing and dark paper stained with age;
About them a peculiar magic hovers
Such as I find not in the modern page.
Quaint printing and dark paper stained with age;
About them a peculiar magic hovers
Such as I find not in the modern page.
I love the odd, the quaint, and the fantastic;
All that your men of "common sense" decline;
Such treasures with a joy enthusiastic
I greet and prize as connoisseurs old wine.
All that your men of "common sense" decline;
Such treasures with a joy enthusiastic
I greet and prize as connoisseurs old wine.
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