AmyLowell:TheBostonAthenaeum

Thou dear and well-loved haunt of happy hours,

How often in some distant gallery,

Gained by a little painful spiral stair,

Far from the halls and corridors where throng

The crowd of casual readers, have I passed

Long, peaceful hours seated on the floor

Of some retired nook, all lined with books,

Where reverie and quiet reign supreme!

Above, below, on every side, high shelved

From careless grasp of transient interest,

Stand books we can but dimly see, their charm

Much greater that their titles are unread;

While on a level with the dusty floor

Others are ranged in orderly confusion,

And we must stoop in painful posture while

We read their names and learn their histories.

The little gallery winds round about

The middle of a most secluded room,

Midway between the ceiling and the floor.

A type of those high thoughts, which while we read

Hover between the earth and furthest heaven

As fancy wills, leaving the printed page;

For books but give the theme, our hearts the rest,

Enriching simple words with unguessed harmony

And overtones of thought we only know.

And as we sit long hours quietly,

Reading at times, and at times simply dreaming,

The very room itself becomes a friend,

The confidant of intimate hopes and fears;

A place where are engendered pleasant thoughts,

And possibilities before unguessed

Come to fruition born of sympathy.

And as in some gay garden stretched upon

A genial southern slope, warmed by the sun,

The flowers give their fragrance joyously

To the caressing touch of the hot noon;

So books give up the all of what they mean

Only in a congenial atmosphere,

Only when touched by reverent hands, and read

By those who love and feel as well as think.

For books are more than books, they are the life,

The very heart and core of ages past,

The reason why men lived, and worked, and died,

The essence and quintessence of their lives.

And we may know them better, and divine

The inner motives whence their actions sprang,

Far better than the men who only knew

Their bodily presence, the soul forever hid

From those with no ability to see.

They wait here quietly for us to come

And find them out, and know them for our friends;

These men who toiled and wrote only for this,

To leave behind such modicum of truth

As each perceived and each alone could tell.

Silently waiting that from time to time

It may be given them to illuminate

Dull daily facts with pristine radiance

For some long-waited-for affinity

Who lingers yet in the deep womb of time.

The shifting sun pierces the young green leaves

Of elm trees, newly coming into bud,

And splashes on the floor and on the books

Through old, high, rounded windows, dim with age.

The noisy city-sounds of modern life

Float softened to us across the old graveyard.

The room is filled with a warm, mellow light,

No garish colours jar on our content,

The books upon the shelves are old and worn.

T was no belated effort nor attempt

To keep abreast with old as well as new

That placed them here, tricked in a modern guise,

Easily got, and held in light esteem.

Our fathers fathers, slowly and carefully

Gathered them, one by one, when they were new

And a delighted world received their thoughts

Hungrily; while we but love the more,

Because they are so old and grown so dear!

The backs of tarnished gold, the faded boards,

The slightly yellowing page, the strange old type,

All speak the fashion of another age;

The thoughts peculiar to the man who wrote

Arrayed in garb peculiar to the time;

As though the idiom of a man were caught

Imprisoned in the idiom of a race.

A nothing truly, yet a link that binds

All ages to their own inheritance,

And stretching backward, dim and dimmer still,

Is lost in a remote antiquity.

Grapes do not come of thorns nor figs of thistles,

And even a great poets divinest thought

Is coloured by the world he knows and sees.

The little intimate things of every day,

The trivial nothings that we think not of,

These go to make a part of each man

As much a part as do the larger thoughts

He takes account of. Nay, the little things

Of daily life it is which mold, and shape,

And make him apt for noble deeds and true.

And as we read some much-loved masterpiece,

Read it as long ago the author read,

With eyes that brimmed with tears as he saw

The message he believed in stamped in type

Inviolable for the slow-coming years;

We know a certain subtle sympathy,

We seem to clasp his hand across the past,

His words become related to the time,

He is at one with his own glorious creed

And all that in his world was dared and done.

The long, still, fruitful hours slip away

Shedding their influences as they pass;

We know ourselves the richer to have sat

Upon this dusty floor and dreamed our dreams.

No other place to us were quite the same,

No other dreams so potent in their charm,

For this is ours! Every twist and turn

Of every narrow stair is known and loved;

Each nook and cranny is our very own;

The dear, old, sleepy place is full of spells

For us, by right of long inheritance.

The building simply bodies forth a thought

Peculiarly inherent to the race.

And we, descendants of that elder time,

Have learnt to love the very form in which

The thought has been embodied to our years.

And here we feel that we are not alone,

We too are one with our own richest past;

And here that veiled, but ever smouldering fire

Of race, which rarely seen yet never dies,

Springs up afresh and warms us with its heat.

And must they take away this treasure house,

To us so full of thoughts and memories;

To all the world beside a dismal place

Lacking in all this modern age requires

To tempt along the unfamiliar paths

And leafy lanes of old time literatures?

It takes some time for moss and vines to grow

And warmly cover gaunt and chill stone walls

Of stately buildings from the cold North Wind.

The lichen of affection takes as long,

Or longer, ere it lovingly enfolds

A place which since without it were bereft,

All stript and bare, shorn of its chiefest grace.

For what to us were halls and corridors

However large and fitting, if we part

With this which is our birthright; if we lose

A sentiment profound, unsoundable,

Which Times slow ripening alone can make,

And mans blind foolishness so quickly mar.