Classic Poem

Insatiable thief, you're wrong to think
That poets can be made at such a price;
Though paper's cheap and copying and ink,
Believe me eighteen-pence will not suffice.
Seek an unpublished work, verse yet unknown.
Whose virgin page its owner guards within
Close locked and sealed and scanned by him alone,
Unsmeared as yet by any studious chin.
For books once known can hardly be suborned
To change their lord; find an unpolished scroll
With boss and parchment cover unadorned —
Some such I have and would not tell a soul —
Remember, if for stolen fame you look,
To buy the author's silence, not his book.