The Book Lovers' Anthology

Sit here and muse!-it is an antique room-

High-roofed, with casements, through whose purple pane

Unwilling Daylight steals amidst the gloom,

Shy as a fearful stranger.

There They reign

(In loftier pomp than waking life had known),

The Kings of Thought!-not crowned until the grave

When Agamemnon sinks into the tomb,

The beggar Homer mounts the Monarch's throne!

Ye ever-living and imperial Souls,

Who rule us from the page in which ye breathe,

All that divide us from the clod ye gave!-

Law-Order-Love-Intelligence-the Sense

Of Beauty-Music and the Minstrel's wreath!-

What were our wanderings if without your goals?

As air and light, the glory ye dispense

Becomes our being-who of us can tell

What he had been, had Cadmus never taught

The art that fixes into form the thought-

Had Plato never spoken from his cell,

Or his high harp blind Homer never strung?

Kinder all earth hath grown since genial Shakespeare sung!