Books and the Man

When the years gather round us like stern foes
That give no quarter, and the ranks of love
Break here and there, untouched there still abide
Friends whom no adverse fate can wound or move:

A deathless heritage, for these are they
Who neither fail nor falter; we, alas!
Can hope no more of friendship than to fill
The mortal hour of earth and, mortal, pass.

Steadfast and generous, they greet us still
Through every fortune with unchanging looks,
Unasked no counsel give, are silent folk;
The careless-minded lightly call them books.

Of the proud peerage of the mind are they,
Fair, courteous gentlemen who wait our will
When come the lonely hours the scholar loves,
And glows the hearth and all the house is still.

Wilt choose for guest the good old doctor knight,
Quaint, learned and odd, or very wisely shrewd,
Or with Dan Chaucer win a quiet hour
Far from our noisy century's alien mood?

Wilt sail great seas on rhythmic lyrics borne,
In the high company of gallant souls,
Where, ringed with stately death, proud Grenville lies,
Or the far thunder of the Armada rolls?

Wilt call that English lad Fabricius taught
And Padua knew, arid that heroic soul—
Our brave Vesalius? Long the list of friends,
Far through the ages runs that shining roll.

How happy he who, native to their tongue,
A mystic language reads between the lines:
Gay, gallant fancies, songs unheard before,
Ripe with the worldless wisdom love divines;

Rich with dumb records of long centuries past,
The viewless dreams of poet, scholar, sage;
What marginalia of unwritten thought,
With glowing rubrics deck the splendid page!

Some ghostly presence haunts the lucid phrase
Where Bacon pondered o'er the words we scan.
Here grave Montaigne with cynic wisdom played,
And lo, the book becomes for us a man!

Shall we not find more dear the happy page
Where Lamb, forgetting sorrow, loved to dwell,
Or that which won from Thackeray's face a smile,
Or lit the gloom of Raleigh's prison cell?

And if this gentle company has made
The comrade heart to pain an easier prey,
They, too, were heirs of sorrow; well they know
With what brave thoughts to charm thy cares away.

And shouldst thou crave an hour's glad reprieve
From mortal cares that mock the mind's control,
For thee Cervantes laughs the world away!
What priest is wiser than our Shakespeare's soul?

Show me his friends and I the man shall know;
This wiser turn a larger wisdom lends:
Show me the books he loves and I shall know
The man far better than through mortal friends.

Do you perchance recall when first we met,
And gaily winged with thought the flying night,
And won with ease the friendship of the mind?—
I like to call it friendship at first sight.

And then you found with us a second home,
And, in the practice of life's happiest art,
You little guessed how readily you won
The added friendship of the open heart.

And now a score of years has fled away
In noble service of life's highest ends,
And my glad capture of a London night
Disputes with me a continent of friends.

But you and I may claim an older date,
The fruitful amity of forty years,—
A score for me, a score for you, and so
How simple that arithmetic appears!

But are old friends the best? What age, I ask,
Must friendships own to earn the title old?
Shall none seem old save he who won or lost
When fists were up or ill-kept wickets bowled?

Are none old friends who never blacked your eyes?
Or with a shinny whacked the youthful shin?
Or knew the misery of the pliant birch?
Or, apple-tempted, shared in Adam's sin?

Grave Selden saith, and quotes the pedant King,
Old friends are best, and, like to well-worn shoes,
The oldest are the easiest. Not for me!
The easy friend is not the friend I choose.

But if the oldest friends are best indeed,
I 'd have the proverb otherwise expressed—
Friends are not best because they 're merely old,
But only old because they proved the best.