 | A collection of poems by Ernest Radford |  |
55
THE AUTHOR'S LIBRARY.
A Sonnet derailed.
My comrades, tho' ye figure not in Lowndes,
Thy costlier brethren long have lost their home,
Shall ye be ravished from me, tome by tome,
For fewer shillings than ye cost me pounds?
Oh! when our breezy language knew no bounds,
And when the mildest oath in use was—Zounds!
The custom was for poets forced to roam
To clear the mouth back-handed of its foam,
Consign the dun to London's Ditch of Hounds,
And then with certain red-hot playthings make
The humbled Hebrew think it best to take,
“Please God and Holy Moses,” pence for pounds.
Thy costlier brethren long have lost their home,
Shall ye be ravished from me, tome by tome,
For fewer shillings than ye cost me pounds?
Oh! when our breezy language knew no bounds,
And when the mildest oath in use was—Zounds!
The custom was for poets forced to roam
To clear the mouth back-handed of its foam,
Consign the dun to London's Ditch of Hounds,
And then with certain red-hot playthings make
The humbled Hebrew think it best to take,
“Please God and Holy Moses,” pence for pounds.
Shades of unthrifty authors who are dead!
Once, snugly harboured, dallying by turns
With new and old, in such pure peace I read
As he who, lacking nothing, idly learns,
But now of poets all too widely spread,
The chief are the song-masters: after Heine, Burns.
Once, snugly harboured, dallying by turns
With new and old, in such pure peace I read
As he who, lacking nothing, idly learns,
But now of poets all too widely spread,
The chief are the song-masters: after Heine, Burns.
| A collection of poems by Ernest Radford | |