There is a book not written

  By any human hand,

The prophets all have studied,

  The priests have always banned.

 

I read it every morning,

  I ponder it by night;

And Death shall overtake me

  Trimming my humble light.

 

He’ll say, as did my father

  When I was young and small,

“My son, no time for reading!

  The night awaits us all.”

 

He’ll smile, as did my father

  When I was small and young,

That I should be so eager

  Over an unknown tongue.

 

Then I would leave my volume

  And willingly obey,—

Get me a little slumber

  Against another day.

 

Content that he who taught me

  Should bid me sleep awhile,

I would expect the morning

  To bring his courtly smile;

 

New verses to decipher,

  New chapters to explore,

While loveliness and wisdom

  Grew ever more and more!

 

For who could ever tire

  Of that wild legendry,

The folklore of the mountains,

  The drama of the sea?

 

I pore for days together

  Over some lost refrain,—

The epic of the thunder,

  The lyric of the rain.

 

This was the creed and canon

  Of Jefferies and Thoreau,

And all the free believers

  Who worshipped long ago.

 

Here Amiel in sadness,

  And Burns in pure delight,

Sought for the hidden import

  Of man’s eternal plight.

 

No Xenophon and Cæsar

  This master had for guides,

Yet here are well recorded

  The marches of the tides.

 

Here are the marks of greatness

  Accomplished without noise,

The Elizabethan vigour,

  And the Landorian poise;

 

The sweet Chaucerian temper,

  Smiling at all defeats;

The gusty moods of Shelley,

  The autumn-calms of Keats.

 

Here were derived the gospels

  Of Emerson and John;

’Twas with this revelation

  The face of Moses shone.

 

Here Blake and Job and Omar

  The author’s meaning traced;

Here Virgil got his sweetness,

  And Arnold his unhaste.

 

Here Horace learned to question,

  And Browning to reply,

When soul stood up on trial

  For her mortality.

 

And all these lovely spirits

  Who read in the great book,

Then went away in silence

  With their illumined look,

 

Left comment, as art furnished

  A margin for their skill,—

Their guesses at the secret

  Whose gist eludes us still.

 

And still in that green volume,

  With ardour and with youth

Undaunted, my companions

  Are searching for the truth.

 

One page, entitled Grand Pré,

  Has the idyllic air

That Bion might have envied:

  I set a footnote there.