CHAPTER 1: "Authors Foreword" ("To the Publisher")
When honest men are all in bed, We poets at our desks are toiling, To earn a modicum of bread, And keep the pot a-boiling; We weld together, bit by bit, The fabric of our laboured wit.
We see with eyes of frank dismay The coming of this Autumn season, When bards are driven to display Their feast of rhyme and reason; With hectic brain and loosened collar, We chase the too-elusive dollar.
While Publishers, in search of grist, Despise our masterly inaction, And shake their faces in our fist, Demanding satisfaction, We view with vague or vacant mind The grim agreements we have signed.
For though a willing public gives Its timely share of cash assistance, The author (like the dentist) lives A hand-to-mouth existence; And Publishers, those modern Circes, Make pig's-ear purses of his verses.
Behold! How ill, how thin and pale, The features of the furtive jester! Compelled by contracts to curtail His moments of siesta! A true White Knight is he to-day ("Nuit Blanche", as Stevenson would say).
Ah, surely he has laboured well, Constructing this immortal sequel, -- A work which no one could excel, And very few can equal, -- A volume which, I dare to say, Is epoch-making, in its way.
When other poets' work is not, These verses shall retain their label; When Herford is a thing forgot, And Ade an ancient fable; When Goops no longer give a sign Of Burgess's empurpled kine.
My Publishers, I love you so! Your well-secreted virtues viewing; Who never let your right hand know Whom your left hand is doing; Who hold me firmly in your grip, And crack your cheque-book, like a whip!
My Publishers, make no mistake, You have in me an "avis rara", So write a princely cheque, and make It payable to bearer; I love you, as I said before, But oh! I love your money more!
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