To the Library Cast-off

Tonight I am going to break my own rules and post something without including a quote. Throughout the few months of this blog's existence, we've heard from all sorts of people: Michel de Montaigne, Annie Dillard, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All quite different, with different experiences, different occupations, even from centuries far apart, and different perspectives on life. Most of the quotes I have shared I discovered completely by accident, some on Google (which I'll admit is cheating), others by simply reading. Each book is like a treasure map, but with "x"s dotting every corner, gold nuggets strewn along the way.

Books not only take the reader on a journey, but each has also been on a journey itself. The kind of history an old book carries with it is something that the e-reader, as popular as it is, will never be able to offer. This is why I love shopping at the local library. You will never buy a new book there, but each one tells two stories: its author's and its own. I will never know who Hugh J. McKully was, but I do know he owned my 1912 copy of Ben-Hur before I did. I have never met George and Jackie, but I know they gave a copy of Bartlett's Famous Quotations to their friends Bob and Alice on March 12, 1971, with this quote circled: "What though youth gave love and roses, age still leaves us friends and wine" -Thomas Moore.

The old book isn't always pleasing to look at; it might require great care to keep it intact. Even still, don't throw it away; it may have something to tell you...


To the Library Cast-off

The rusty color of the spine
By a thousand eyes perused.
A thousand fingers traced each line,
Their prints a thousand clues.

Where were you when these bricks were laid?
Perhaps an author's whim?
The newest game at which he played
When success seemed very slim?

Perhaps, you go back farther still,
From a manor house of old.
At home with both the ink and quill,
Your leaves once boasted gold.

The mother who read you while baking bread,
Thank her for leaving her mark.
Thank the child reading undercover in bed,
Who you kept from fearing the dark.

Thank the student with the busy pen,
Whose thoughts were left behind.
Thank the scores of conscientious men,
Whose traces I cannot find.

Some days you were a sorry sight,
Which only librarians saw.
They made your failing binding tight
And wrote a stricter law:

"Special collection, by special request."
"You may not take these home."
Nicely put, a chance to rest
For geriatric tomes.

But even this could never last,
When interest in you had grown cold.
A book will find that in time it has passed
From "history" to simply "too old."

That's how I found you, in the back of a shelf.
For sale, with the dust thick like frost.
I bought you and took you home for myself,
Worth so much more than you cost.

We'll sit by the fire, and you'll tell me today
What you've seen, all the people you've met.
Teach me my friend, and if I have my way
You'll not reach "The End" just yet.