Classic Poem

Deep in his oaken elbow-chair,
In fur-trimmed gown, the old-world Student
Sits toiling with concentrate air,
And earnest underlip protrudent:
Around him, piled on floor and desk,
His open books in wealth unstinted, —
Black letter chronicles grotesque, —
The mellow pages Aldus printed

A winter sunbeam warms the pane
Where proudly ramps the lion argent;
Fleshless and grim, an Afric crane
Stands facing, like some spectral sergeant:
Bright-plumaged birds of tropic clime
Lie right and left, a strange collection,
With fruitage of the autumn-time,
The frugal scholar's spare refection

On sill and shelf a dusty bloom,
Sad scandal to industrious Janet;
Dust on the gods from Pharaoh's tomb,
On figured globe and pictured planet:
A dreamful silence holds the house,
Time checks his passage down the ages,
And tempts a greatly-daring mouse
To feast on Pliny's yellowing pages.

Red morning found our student set
To grapple with some hard construction;
At midnight chime, intenter yet,
He vanquished slumber's mild seduction;
He ransacked every age and shore,
From far Cathay to old Canopus,
To gather up a life-long store —
New treasures for his magnum opus .

He never read Dame Nature's book, —
The finch's nest, the moldwarp's burrow, —
Nor stood to mark the careful rook
Peer sidelong down the newest furrow;
He never watched the warbler dart
From stem to stem among the sedges,
But, hands behind him, paced apart
Between his tall-cut hornbeam hedges.

And so his blameless years rolled by,
To-day the double of to-morrow;
No wish to smile, no need to sigh,
No heart for mirth, no time for sorrow:
His forehead wore a deeper frown,
Eyes grew more dim, and cheeks more hollow,
Till friendly Death one day stepped down,
And softly whispered, " Rise and follow. "

But Fame, victorious maid, resists
The doom for which gray Time intends us!
Immortal titles crowd the lists
Which Mr. Quaritch kindly sends us!
'Twixt Drelincourt and Dryden thrust,
What name confronts you, lone and chilling?
" The works of Gilbert Dryasdust,
Quarto — 3 vols. — old calf — a shilling. "