A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass Part 9

THE BOSTON ATHENAEUM

The Boston Athenaeum

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 pa.s.sed 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 t.i.tles 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 modic.u.m 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 poet's 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's life; 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 n.o.ble 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 pa.s.s; 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 Time's slow ripening alone can make, And man's blind foolishness so quickly mar.

VERSES FOR CHILDREN

Sea Sh.e.l.l

Sea Sh.e.l.l, Sea Sh.e.l.l, Sing me a song, O Please!

A song of ships, and sailor men, And parrots, and tropical trees,

Of islands lost in the Spanish Main Which no man ever may find again, Of fishes and corals under the waves, And seahorses stabled in great green caves.

Sea Sh.e.l.l, Sea Sh.e.l.l, Sing of the things you know so well.

Fringed Gentians

Near where I live there is a lake As blue as blue can be, winds make It dance as they go blowing by.

I think it curtseys to the sky.

It's just a lake of lovely flowers And my Mamma says they are ours; But they are not like those we grow To be our very own, you know.

We have a splendid garden, there Are lots of flowers everywhere; Roses, and pinks, and four o'clocks And hollyhocks, and evening stocks.

Mamma lets us pick them, but never Must we pick any gentians -- ever!

For if we carried them away They'd die of homesickness that day.

The Painted Ceiling

My Grandpapa lives in a wonderful house With a great many windows and doors, There are stairs that go up, and stairs that go down, And such beautiful, slippery floors.

But of all of the rooms, even mother's and mine, And the bookroom, and parlour and all, I like the green dining-room so much the best Because of its ceiling and wall.

Right over your head is a funny round hole With apples and pears falling through; There's a big bunch of grapes all purply and sweet, And melons and pineapples too.

They tumble and tumble, but never come down Though I've stood underneath a long while With my mouth open wide, for I always have hoped Just a cherry would drop from the pile.

No matter how early I run there to look It has always begun to fall through; And one night when at bedtime I crept in to see, It was falling by candle-light too.

I am sure they are magical fruits, and each one Makes you hear things, or see things, or go Forever invisible; but it's no use, And of course I shall just never know.

For the ladder's too heavy to lift, and the chairs Are not nearly so tall as I need.

I've given up hope, and I feel I shall die Without having accomplished the deed.

It's a little bit sad, when you seem very near To adventures and things of that sort, Which nearly begin, and then don't; and you know It is only because you are short.