Poem: Book Borrower

(a couple of similar opinions about people who borrow books)

"Book Borrower" by Robert Service (1874-1958)

I am a mild man, you'll agree,

But red my rage is,

When folks who borrow books from me

Turn down their pages.


Or when a chap a book I lend,

And find he's loaned it

Without permission to a friend

As if he owned it.


But worst of all I hate those crooks

(May hell-fires burn them!)

Who beg the loan of cherished books

And don't return them.


My books are tendrils of myself

No shears can sever . . .

May he who rapes one from its shelf

Be damned forever.

"Book Loaner" by Dick Emmons

The book I lent a year ago

Is now of some concern;

I fear it's reached a new plateau—

The point of no return.

More poems are listed at this Poems: Index.