A Poem for a Thursday #45

Four years ago this week I started this blog. Four years of taking photos of books, talking about books, writing rambling posts about my random thoughts, and being constantly surprised that people take the time to read and comment. I’ve frequently thought I had nothing to say and then found that once I start typing the words are there. I’ve learned a lot about blogging and photography; just enough to know how much I still have to learn. I’ve discovered that I actually like poetry and I have expanded my reading horizons by reading other people’s blogs.

Most people in my everyday life don’t know I have this blog. I don’t talk about it, at first because I was self-conscious and now because not  talking about it has become a habit. But this space has become part of who I am. It is a place where I have a voice and where I can talk about things that many people around me don’t have an interest in. Like anything online, it only portrays a snapshot of my life but that snapshot, small as it is, is real. That means that, yes, I am just as London, tea, and book obsessed as I seem.

It seems appropriate that this week’s poem be connected to books because so much of my blog is about books. Thank you for sticking around and reading my rambling, book-obsessed thoughts.

A precious, mouldering pleasure ‘t is
To meet an antique book,
In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty.
And Sophocles a man;
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore
the gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true;
He lived where dreams were sown. 


In a Library
Emily Dickinson

Reese, at Typings, has also shared a poem.