Poem by Louise Imogen Guiney

In the Reading-Room of the British Museum

Praised be the moon of books! that doth above
A world of men, the sunken Past behold,
And colour spaces else too void and cold,
To make a very heaven again thereof;
As when the sun is set behind a grove,
And faintly unto nether ether rolled,
All night, his whiter image and his mould
Grows beautiful with looking on her love.
Thou, therefore, moon of so divine a ray,
Lend to our steps both fortitude and light!
Feebly along a venerable way
They climb the infinite, or perish quite;
Nothing are days and deeds to such as they,
While in this liberal house thy face is bright.

1. The Still of the Year
2. Hylas
3. The Japanese Anemone
4. Sherman: “An Horatian Ode”
5. Saint Florent-le-Vieil

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