A little learning is a dangerous thing; ·
Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.
Then, warmly walled with books,
While my wood-fire supplied the sun’s defect,
Whispering old forest-sagas in its dreams,
I take my May down from the happy shelf
Where perch the world’s rare song-birds in a row,
Waiting my choice to open with full breast,
And beg an alms of spring-time ne’er denied
Indoors by vernal Chaucer, whose fresh woods
Throb thick with merle and mavis all the year.
LOWELL.
With hands clasped before him, and forefingers pressed against his lips,
he travelled slowly with his eye along the great rows of shelved volumes
on the walls, as though seeking temporary company in their familiar
forms and titles.
Many another lonely man, unable to enjoy that strangely soothing
companionship for the solitary, which nature gives in the murmuring and
music of the woods, has found in his library a forest as tranquilizing
to the fevered mind, and discovered between its unfading leaves the
birds that make tenderest music for the soul.