A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass

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 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 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 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 Time's slow ripening alone can make,

And man's blind foolishness so quickly mar.

Verses for Children

Sea Shell

Sea Shell, Sea Shell,

  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 Shell, Sea Shell,

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.

The Crescent Moon

Slipping softly through the sky

Little horned, happy moon,

Can you hear me up so high?

Will you come down soon?

On my nursery window-sill

Will you stay your steady flight?

And then float away with me

Through the summer night?

Brushing over tops of trees,

Playing hide and seek with stars,

Peeping up through shiny clouds

At Jupiter or Mars.

I shall fill my lap with roses

Gathered in the milky way,

All to carry home to mother.

Oh! what will she say!

Little rocking, sailing moon,

Do you hear me shout -- Ahoy!

Just a little nearer, moon,

To please a little boy.

Climbing

High up in the apple tree climbing I go,

With the sky above me, the earth below.

Each branch is the step of a wonderful stair

Which leads to the town I see shining up there.

Climbing, climbing, higher and higher,

The branches blow and I see a spire,

The gleam of a turret, the glint of a dome,

All sparkling and bright, like white sea foam.

On and on, from bough to bough,

The leaves are thick, but I push my way through;

Before, I have always had to stop,

But to-day I am sure I shall reach the top.

Today to the end of the marvelous stair,

Where those glittering pinacles flash in the air!

Climbing, climbing, higher I go,

With the sky close above me, the earth far below.

The Trout

Naughty little speckled trout,

Can't I coax you to come out?

Is it such great fun to play

In the water every day?

Do you pull the Naiads' hair

Hiding in the lilies there?

Do you hunt for fishes' eggs,

Or watch tadpoles grow their legs?

Do the little trouts have school

In some deep sun-glinted pool,

And in recess play at tag

Round that bed of purple flag?

I have tried so hard to catch you,

Hours and hours I've sat to watch you;

But you never will come out,

Naughty little speckled trout!

Wind

He shouts in the sails of the ships at sea,

He steals the down from the honeybee,

He makes the forest trees rustle and sing,

He twirls my kite till it breaks its string.

   Laughing, dancing, sunny wind,

   Whistling, howling, rainy wind,

   North, South, East and West,

   Each is the wind I like the best.

He calls up the fog and hides the hills,

He whirls the wings of the great windmills,

The weathercocks love him and turn to discover

His whereabouts -- but he's gone, the rover!

   Laughing, dancing, sunny wind,

   Whistling, howling, rainy wind,

   North, South, East and West,

   Each is the wind I like the best.

The pine trees toss him their cones with glee,

The flowers bend low in courtesy,

Each wave flings up a shower of pearls,

The flag in front of the school unfurls.

   Laughing, dancing, sunny wind,

   Whistling, howling, rainy wind,

   North, South, East and West,

   Each is the wind I like the best.

The Pleiades

By day you cannot see the sky

For it is up so very high.

You look and look, but it's so blue

That you can never see right through.

But when night comes it is quite plain,

And all the stars are there again.

They seem just like old friends to me,

I've known them all my life you see.

There is the dipper first, and there

Is Cassiopeia in her chair,

Orion's belt, the Milky Way,

And lots I know but cannot say.

One group looks like a swarm of bees,

Papa says they're the Pleiades;

But I think they must be the toy

Of some nice little angel boy.

Perhaps his jackstones which to-day

He has forgot to put away,

And left them lying on the sky

Where he will find them bye and bye.

I wish he'd come and play with me.

We'd have such fun, for it would be

A most unusual thing for boys

To feel that they had stars for toys!

B A C K