VALEDICTORY; THE SCHOLAR TO THE ASHES OF HIS LIBRARY by CHARLES WILLIAM BRODRIBB

Gone the books of many names,
Eaten up by hostile flames;
Loss of all his store at once
Leaves him a senescent dunce.

@3Tecum habita et noris@1
What your freightage at three score is.
Where is now a lifetime's reading?
Is aught left for years succeeding?
Just a few scraps often quoted,
Or a fragment vaguely noted;
All is ash and burnt-out embers
But what one poor brain remembers.
Yet he sees the friendly faces
Row on row in their set places;
Knows exactly what is in them,
Could he wake up and re-win them.
Nay; they're ghosts, and they are gone
Into charred oblivion.

Fortune of the war, old man;
Play the Stoic if you can;
In the breast the heart be hid
Of the Second Aeneid,
Known and conned too many years
Not to transubstantiate tears.
"Studies into manners pass"—
So the sage's saying was.
Studies are for virtue's sake;
Be the man that they should make.

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