John Conington - To His Book lyrics

To His Book Vertumnum Janumque To street and market-place I see you look With wistful longing, my adventurous book, That on the stalls for sale you may be seen, Rubbed by the binder's pumice smooth and clean. You chafe at look and key, and court the view Of all the world, disdainful of the few. Was this your breeding? go where you would go; When once sent out, you won't come back, you know. "What mischief have I done?" I hear you whine, When some one hurts those feelings, now so fine; For hurt you're sure to be; when people pall Of reading you, they'll crush and fold you small. If my prophetic soul be not at fault From indignation at your rude revolt, Your doom, methinks, is easy to foretell: While you've your gloss on, Rome will like you well: Then, when you're thumbed and soiled by vulgar hands, You'll feed the moths, or go to distant lands. Ah, then you'll mind your monitor too late, While he looks on and chuckles at your fate, Like him who, pestered by his donkey's vice, Got off and pushed it down the precipice; For who would lose his temper and his breath To keep a brute alive that's bent on d**h? Yet one thing more: your fate may be to teach In some suburban school the parts of speech, And, maundering over grammar day by day, Lisp, prattle, drawl, grow childish, and decay. Well, when in summer afternoons you see Men fain to listen, tell them about me: Tell them that, born a freedman's son, possessed Of slender means, I soared beyond my nest, That so whate'er's deducted for my birth May count as a**ets on the score of worth; Say that I pleased the greatest of my day: Then draw my picture;—prematurely grey, Of little person, fond of sunny ease, Lightly provoked, but easy to appease. Last, if my age they ask you, let them know That I was forty-four not long ago, In the December of last year, the same That goes by Lepidus' and Lollius' name.