Within this place of pleasant idleness
Stand in long serried rows books old and new;
Gilt pages with their rich dark bindings press
Cloth covers in their faded jade and blue.
Turning the languid leaves one finds perchance,
Half the fierce wisdom that the years have wrought,
Bright-eyed adventure or rose-winged romance,
The golden echoes of a poet's thought.
Beyond the door stretches the busy street --
Voices, and laughter, and harsh merriment;
Within the trifler and the scholar meet
Amid a cloistered silence of content:
Here where a grey cat yawns with languid grace,
Trimming her whiskers in dead Homer's face.
First published in The Bulletin, 11 November 1920
