Go read your book!

How many times that grim old phrase
Has silenced me, in childish days!
And now —as then it did —
The phantom admonition, clear
And dominant, rings, and I hear,
And do as I am bid.
"Go read your book!" my good old sire
Commanded, in affected ire,
When I, with querying look
And speech, dared vex his studious mind
With idle words of any kind. —
And so I read my book.

Though seldom, in that wisest age,
Did I discern on Wisdom's page
More than the task: that led
At least to thinking, and at last
To reading less, and not so fast,
And longing as I read,

And, lo! in gracious time I grc
To love a book all through and through!—
With. yearning eyes I look
On any votume, —o!d, maybe,
Or new —'tis meat and drink to me.—
And so I read my book.

Old dog-eared Readers, scarred and inked
With school-boy hatred, long extinct; —
Old Histories that bored
Me worst of all the school;—old, worn
Arithmetics, frayed, ripped, and torn —
Now Ye are all adored!

And likewise I revere and praise
My sire, as now, with vainest gaze
And bearing, still I look
For the old face so grave yet dear —
Nay, still I see, and still I hear!
And so I read my book.

Next even to my nearest kin, —
My wife —my children romping in
From school to ride my knee, —
I Iove a book, and dispossess
My lap of it with loathfulness,
For all their love of me.

For, grave or gay the book, it takes
Me as an equal-calms, or makes
Me, laughing, overlook
My little self —forgetful all
Of being so exceeding small.
And so I read my book.