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THE LIBRARIAN'S DREAM.

1.

He sat at night by his lonely bed, With an open book before him; And slowly nodded his weary head, As slumber came stealing o'er him.

2.

And he saw ill his dream a mighty host Of the writers gone before, And the shadowy form of many a ghost Glided in at the open door.

3.

Great Homer came first in a snow-white shroud, And Virgil sang sweet by his side; While Cicero thundered in accents loud, And Caesar most gravely replied.

4.

Anacreon, too, from his rhythmical lips The honey of Hybla distilled, And Herodotus suffered a partial eclipse, While Horace with music was filled.

5.

The procession of ancients was brilliant and long, Aristotle and Plato were there, Thucydides, too, and Tacitus strong, And Plutarch, and Sappho the fair.

6.

Aristophanes elbowed gay Ovid's white ghost, And Euripides Xenophon led, While Propertius laughed loud at Juvenal's jokes, And Sophocles rose from the dead.

7.

Then followed a throng to memory dear, Of writers more modern in age, Cervantes and Shakespeare, who died the same year, And Chaucer, and Bacon the sage.

8.

Immortal the laurels that decked the fair throng, And Dante moved by with his lyre, While Montaigne and Pascal stood rapt by his song, And Boccaccio paused to admire.

9.

Sweet Spenser and Calderon moved arm in arm, While Milton and Sidney were there, Pope, Dryden, and Moliere added their charm, And Bunyan, and Marlowe so rare.

10.

Then Gibbon stalked by in classical guise, And Hume, and Macaulay, and Froude, While Darwin, and Huxley, and Tyndall looked wise, And Humboldt and Comte near them stood.

11.

Dean Swift looked sardonic on Addison's face, And Johnson tipped Boswell a wink, Walter Scott and Jane Austen hobnobbed o'er a glass, And Goethe himself deigned to drink.

12.

Robert Burns followed next with Thomas Carlyle, Jean Paul paired with Coleridge, too, While De Foe elbowed Goldsmith, the master of style, And Fielding and Schiller made two.

13.

Rousseau with his eloquent, marvelous style, And Voltaire, with his keen, witty pen, Victor Hugo so grand, though repellent the while, And Dumas and Balzac again.

14.

Dear Thackeray came in his happiest mood, And stayed until midnight was done, Bulwer-Lytton, and Reade, and Kingsley and Hood, And Dickens, the master of fun.

15.

George Eliot, too, with her matter-full page, And Byron, and Browning, and Keats, While Shelley and Tennyson joined youth and age, And Wordsworth the circle completes.

16.

Then followed a group of America's best, With Irving, and Bryant, and Holmes, While Bancroft and Motley unite with the rest, And Thoreau with Whittier comes.

17.

With his Raven in hand dreamed on Edgar Poe, And Longfellow sweet and serene, While Prescott, and Ticknor, and Emerson too, And Hawthorne and Lowell were seen.

18.

While thus the assembly of witty and wise Rejoiced the librarian's sight, Ere the wonderful vision had fled from his eyes, From above shone a heavenly light:

19.

And solemn and sweet came a voice from the skies, "All battles and conflicts are done, The temple of Knowledge shall open all eyes, And law, faith, and reason are one!" When the radiant dawn of the morning broke, From his glorious dream the librarian woke.  

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