Classic Poem

In this old farmhouse garret where I stray,
A refugee from worries of the town,
I dig and delve the livelong summer day
Through ancient volumes, dusty, worn and brown.

On dingy panes a hornet fumes and frets,
A beetle thumps the wall with sudden thud;
A wasp hangs captive in a spider's nets
A dirt-daub, singing, moulds his house of mud.

A mantel holds two antiquated clocks,
Where scampering mice go playing hide-and-seek;
A wren, snug-nested in an empty box,
Sits calm and quiet while her fledglings squeak.

Here, like a vein of purest virgin gold
Deep-hidden in the desert rock and sand,
Are all the treasures of the days of old,
Brought by the Great and Good from every land.

Here all the friends of youth (for youth alone
Can make the friendships that are sure to last)
Soothe once again the heart half turned to stone,
With old enchantments that I thought were past.

Here, like a pirate at his secret cave,
I dig my buried ingots from the junk;
And, like a diver, from an ocean grave
I raise the Spanish galleons that I sunk.

Here all the wise sit in serene array,
Where Plato's words flow forth in honeyed sweets;
I see the face of Goldsmith and of Gray,
I walk with Shelley and I talk with Keats.

O magic Past, you woo me from To-day;
The frenzied world outside is lost to view.
Old friends are best! I tread this quiet way,
Forsaking not the old to win the new.

Like mellow wine in cobwebbed cellars stored,
Here burn the suns of long-forgotten years;
To-day I revel in their precious hoard
Of love and laughter, gladness, grief and tears.