A Book for All Readers Part 29

BALLADE OF TRUE WISDOM.

While others are asking for beauty or fame, Or praying to know that for which they should pray, Or courting Queen Venus, that affable dame, Or chasing the Muses the weary and grey, The sage has found out a more excellent way-- To Pan and to Pallas his incense he showers, And his humble pet.i.tion puts up day by day, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Inventors may bow to the G.o.d that is lame, And crave from the fire on his st.i.thy a ray; Philosophers kneel to the G.o.d without name, Like the people of Athens, agnostics are they; The hunter a fawn to Diana will slay, The maiden wild roses will wreathe for the Hours; But the wise man will ask, ere libation he pay, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

Oh grant me a life without pleasure or blame (As mortals count pleasure who rush through their day With a speed to which that of the tempest is tame) O grant me a house by the beach of a bay, Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!

And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

ENVOY.

G.o.ds, grant or withhold it; your "yea" and your "nay"

Are immutable, heedless of outcry of ours: But life is worth living, and here we would stay For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.

ANDREW LANG.

THE LIBRARY.

They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they chastise, Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise: Their aid they yield to all: they never shun The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone: Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud, They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd; Nor tell to various people various things, But show to subjects, what they show to kings.

Blest be the gracious Power, who taught mankind To stamp a lasting image of the mind!

With awe, around these silent walks I tread; These are the lasting mansions of the dead:-- "The dead!" methinks a thousand tongues reply; "These are the tombs of such as cannot die!

Crown'd with eternal fame, they sit sublime, And laugh at all the little strife of time."

Lo, all in silence, all in order stand, And mighty folios first, a lordly band; Then quartos their well-order'd ranks maintain, And light octavos fill a s.p.a.cious plain: See yonder, ranged in more frequent rows, A humbler band of duodecimos; While undistinguished trifles swell the scene, The last new play and fritter'd magazine.

Here all the rage of controversy ends, And rival zealots rest like bosom friends: An Athanasian here, in deep repose, Sleeps with the fiercest of his Arian foes; Socinians here with Calvinists abide, And thin part.i.tions angry chiefs divide; Here wily Jesuits simple Quakers meet, And Bellarmine has rest at Luther's feet.

GEORGE CRABBE.

ETERNITY OF POETRY.

For deeds doe die, however n.o.blie donne, And thoughts do as themselves decay; But wise words, taught in numbers for to runne Recorded by the Muses, live for ay; Ne may with storming showers be washt away, Ne bitter breathing windes with harmful blast, Nor age, nor envie, shall them ever wast.

SPENSER.

THE OLD BOOKS.

The old books, the old books, the books of long ago!

Who ever felt Miss Austen tame, or called Sir Walter slow?

We did not care the worst to hear of human sty or den; We liked to love a little bit, and trust our fellow-men.

The old books, the old books, as pure as summer breeze!

We read them under garden boughs, by fire-light on our knees, They did not teach, they did not preach, or scold us into good; A n.o.ble spirit from them breathed, the rest was understood.

The old books, the old books, the mother loves them best; They leave no bitter taste behind to haunt the youthful breast: They bid us hope, they bid us fill our hearts with visions fair; They do not paralyze the will with problems of despair.

And as they lift from sloth and sense to follow loftier planes, And stir the blood of indolence to bubble in the veins: Inheritors of mighty things, who own a lineage high, We feel within us budding wings that long to reach the sky: To rise above the commonplace, and through the cloud to soar, And join the loftier company of grander souls of yore.

THE SPECTATOR.

CHAPTER 25.

HUMORS OF THE LIBRARY.[3]

SOME THOUGHTS ON CLa.s.sIFICATION.

_By Librarian F. M. Crunden._

Cla.s.sification is vexation, Shelf-numbering is as bad; The rule of D Doth puzzle me; Mnemonics drives me mad.

_Air--The Lord Chancellor's Song._

When first I became a librarian, Says I to myself, says I, I'll learn all their systems as fast as I can, Says I to myself, says I; The Cutter, the Dewey, the Schwartz, and the Poole, The alphabet, numeral, mnemonic rule, The old, and the new, and the eclectic school, Says I to myself, says I.

Cla.s.s-numbers, shelf-numbers, book-numbers, too, Says I to myself, says I, I'll study them all, and I'll learn them clear thro', Says I to myself, says I; I'll find what is good, and what's better and best, And I'll put two or three to a practical test; And then--if I've time--I'll take a short rest, Says I to myself, says I.

But art it is long and time it doth fly, Says I to myself, says I, And three or four years have already pa.s.sed by, Says I to myself, says I; And yet on those systems I'm not at all clear, While new combinations forever appear, To master them all is a life-work, I fear, Says I to myself, says I.

Cla.s.sification in a Library in Western New York: Gail Hamilton's "Woolgathering," under Agriculture.

Book asked for. "An attack philosopher in Paris."

A changed t.i.tle. A young woman went into a library the other day and asked for the novel ent.i.tled "She combeth not her head," but she finally concluded to take "He cometh not, she said."

Labor-saving devices. The economical catalogue-maker who thus set down two t.i.tles--

"Mill on the Floss, do. Political economy."

has a sister who keeps a universal sc.r.a.p-book into which everything goes, but which is carefully indexed. She, too, has a mind for saving, as witness:

"Patti, Adelina.

do. Oyster."

From a New York auction catalogue:

"267. Junius Stat Nominis Umbrii, with numerous splendid portraits."