How many?
How many sonnets would you give for me? If you were a usurer in gold instead of rhyme, I would ask how many dollars. But it is unjust to pay in a coin that we value little. To a man starving in gold mines, a piece of bread weighs more than all the treasures on earth. To you, I warrant your poems are the standard of appreciation. How many would you give for me? One, two, three?
The House of the Vampire
By George Sylvester Viereck
How true. I'd want to be paid in desire, for I have enough of the rest and too little of the first.