OF READING.
One drachma for a good book, and a thousand talents for a true friend;—
So standeth the market, where scarce is ever costly:
Yea, were the diamonds of Golconda common as shingles on the shore,
A ripe apple would ransom kings before a shining stone:
And so, were a wholesome book as rare as an honest friend,
To choose the book be mine: the friend let another take.
For altered looks and jealousies and fears have none entrance there:
The silent volume listeneth well, and speaketh when thou listest:
It praiseth thy good without envy, it chideth thine evil without malice,
It is to thee thy waiting slave, and thine unbending teacher.
Need to humour no caprice, need to bear with no infirmity;
Thy sin, thy slander, or neglect, chilleth not, quencheth not, its love:
Unalterably speaketh it the truth, warped nor by error nor interest;
For a good book is the best of friends, the same to-day and for ever.
To draw thee out of self, thy petty plans and cautions,
To teach thee what thou lackest, to tell thee how largely thou art blest,
To lure thy thought from sorrow, to feed thy famished mind,
To graft another's wisdom on thee, pruning thine own folly,
Choose discreetly, and well digest the volume most suited to thy case,
Touching not religion with levity, nor deep things when thou art wearied.
Thy mind is freshened by morning air, grapple with science and philosophy;
Noon hath unnerved thy thoughts, dream for a while on fictions:
Grey evening sobereth thy spirit, walk thou then with worshippers:
But reason shall dig deepest in the night, and fancy fly most free.
O books, ye monuments of mind, concrete wisdom of the wisest;
Sweet solaces of daily life; proofs and results of immortality;
Trees yielding all fruits, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations;
Groves of knowledge, where all may eat, nor fear a flaming sword:
Gentle comrades, kind advisers; friends, comforts, treasures:
Helps, governments, diversities of tongues; who can weigh your worth?—
To walk no longer with the just; to be driven from the porch of science;
To bid long adieu to those intimate ones, poets, philosophers, and teachers;
To see no record of the sympathies which bind thee in communion with the good;
To be thrust from the feet of Him who spake as never man spake;
To have no avenue to heaven but the dim aisle of superstition;
To live as an Esquimaux, in lethargy; to die as the Mohawk, in ignorance:
O what were life, but a blank? what were death, but a terror?
What were man, but a burden to himself? what were mind, but misery?
Yea, let another Omar burn the full library of knowledge,
And the broad world may perish in the flames, offered on the ashes of its wisdom!
