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　　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. The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb — Volume 4