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Here, perfect to a wish,
We offer, not a dish,
But just the platter:
A book that’s not a book,
A pamphlet in the look
But not the matter.
I own in disarray;
As to the flowers of May
The frosts of Winter,
To my poetic rage,
The smallness of the page
And of the printer.
As seamen on the seas
With song and dance descry
Adown the morning breeze
An islet in the sky:
In Araby the dry,
As o’er the sandy plain
The panting camels cry
To smell the coming rain.
So all things over earth
A common law obey
And rarity and worth
Pass, arm in arm, away;
And even so, today,
The printer and the bard,
In pressless Davos, pray
Their sixpenny reward.
The pamphlet here presented
Was planned and printed by
A printer unindent-ed,
A bard whom all decry.
The author and the printer,
With various kinds of skill,
Concocted it in Winter
At Davos on the Hill.
They burned the nightly taper
But now the work is ripe
Observe the costly paper,
Remark the perfect type!
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