And close at hand, the basket stood With nuts from brown October's wood.

Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play!

With silence only as their benediction, God's angels come Where in the shadow of a great affliction, The soul sits dumb!

How dwarfed against his manliness she sees the poor pretension, the wants, the aims, the follies, born of fashion and convention!

On leaf of palm, on sedge-wrought roll; on plastic clay and leather scroll, man wrote his thoughts; the ages passed, and lo! the Press was found at last!

Here Greek and Roman find themselves alive along these crowded shelves; and Shakespeare treads again his stage, and Chaucer paints anew his age.