Silence Is The Best Response To A

Books, Books, Books! I Had Found The Secret Of A Garret Room Piled High With Cases In My Father’s Name; Piled High, Packed Large,--where, Creeping In And Out Among The Giant Fossils Of My Past, Like Some Small Nimble Mouse Between The Ribs Of A Mastodon, I Nibbled Here And There At This Or That Box, Pulling Through The Gap, In Heats Of Terror, Haste, Victorious Joy, The First Book First. And How I Felt It Beat Under My Pillow, In The Morning’s Dark, An Hour Before The Sun Would Let Me Read! My Books!

I Remember, When I Was A Child And Wrote Poems In Little Clasped Books, I Used To Kiss The Books And Put Them Away Tenderly Because I Had Been Happy Near Them, And Take Them Out By Turns When I Was Going From Home, To Cheer Them By The Change Of Air And The Pleasure Of The New Place. This, Not For The Sake Of The Verses Written In Them, And Not For The Sake Of Writing More Verses In Them, But From Pure Gratitude.

There, That Is Our Secret: Go To Sleep! You Will Wake, And Remember, And Understand.

I Have Done Most Of My Talking By Post Of Late Years--as People Shut Up In Dungeons Take Up With Scrawling Mottoes On The Walls.

Two Human Loves Make One Divine.