 | The poetical works of John Godfrey Saxe |  |
THE LIBRARY.
Here, e'en the sturdy democrat may find,Nor scorn their rank, the nobles of the mind;
While kings may learn, nor blush at being shown,
How Learning's patents abrogate their own.
A goodly company and fair to see:
Royal plebeians; earls of low degree;
Beggars whose wealth enriches every clime;
Princes who scarce can boast a mental dime,
Crowd here together, like the quaint array
Of jostling neighbors on a market day:
Homer and Milton,—can we call them blind?—
Of godlike sight, the vision of the mind;
Shakespeare, who calmly looked creation through,
“Exhausted worlds, and then imagined new;”
Plato the sage, so thoughtful and serene,
He seems a prophet by his heavenly mien;
Shrewd Socrates, whose philosophic power
Xantippe proved in many a trying hour;
And Aristophanes, whose humor run
In vain endeavor to be-“cloud” the sun;
Majestic Æschylus, whose glowing page
Holds half the grandeur of the Athenian stage;
Pindar, whose odes, replete with heavenly fire,
Proclaim the master of the Grecian lyre;
Anacreon, famed for many a luscious line
Devote to Venus and the god of wine.
I love vast libraries; yet there is a doubt
If one be better with them or without,—
Unless he use them wisely, and, indeed,
Knows the high art of what and how to read.
At Learning's fountain it is sweet to drink,
But 't is a nobler privilege to think;
And oft, from books apart, the thirsting mind
May make the nectar which it cannot find.
'T is well to borrow from the good and great;
'T is wise to learn; 't is godlike to create!
| The poetical works of John Godfrey Saxe | |