The Art Of Book Making - Prose Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AB C D E F G H I G B E J K B BL| If that severe doom of Synesius be true It is a greater offence to steal dead men's labor than their clothes what shall become of most writers | A |
| BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY | B |
| - | |
| - | |
| - | |
| I have often wondered at the extreme fecundity of the press and how it comes to pass that so many heads on which Nature seems to have inflicted the curse of barrenness should teem with voluminous productions As a man travels on however in the journey of life his objects of wonder daily diminish and he is continually finding out some very simple cause for some great matter of marvel Thus have I chanced in my peregrinations about this great metropolis to blunder upon a scene which unfolded to me some of the mysteries of the book making craft and at once put an end to my astonishment | C |
| - | |
| I was one summer's day loitering through the great saloons of the British Museum with that listlessness with which one is apt to saunter about a museum in warm weather sometimes lolling over the glass cases of minerals sometimes studying the hieroglyphics on an Egyptian mummy and some times trying with nearly equal success to comprehend the allegorical paintings on the lofty ceilings Whilst I was gazing about in this idle way my attention was attracted to a distant door at the end of a suite of apartments It was closed but every now and then it would open and some strange favored being generally clothed in black would steal forth and glide through the rooms without noticing any of the surrounding objects There was an air of mystery about this that piqued my languid curiosity and I determined to attempt the passage of that strait and to explore the unknown regions beyond The door yielded to my hand with all that facility with which the portals of enchanted castles yield to the adventurous knight errant I found myself in a spacious chamber surrounded with great cases of venerable books Above the cases and just under the cornice were arranged a great number of black looking portraits of ancient authors About the room were placed long tables with stands for reading and writing at which sat many pale studious personages poring intently over dusty volumes rummaging among mouldy manuscripts and taking copious notes of their contents A hushed stillness reigned through this mysterious apartment excepting that you might hear the racing of pens over sheets of paper and occasionally the deep sigh of one of these sages as he shifted his position to turn over the page of an old folio doubtless arising from that hollowness and flatulency incident to learned research | D |
| - | |
| Now and then one of these personages would write something on a small slip of paper and ring a bell whereupon a familiar would appear take the paper in profound silence glide out of the room and return shortly loaded with ponderous tomes upon which the other would fall tooth and nail with famished voracity I had no longer a doubt that I had happened upon a body of magi deeply engaged in the study of occult sciences The scene reminded me of an old Arabian tale of a philosopher shut up in an enchanted library in the bosom of a mountain which opened only once a year where he made the spirits of the place bring him books of all kinds of dark knowledge so that at the end of the year when the magic portal once more swung open on its hinges he issued forth so versed in forbidden lore as to be able to soar above the heads of the multitude and to control the powers of Nature | E |
| - | |
| My curiosity being now fully aroused I whispered to one of the familiars as he was about to leave the room and begged an interpretation of the strange scene before me A few words were sufficient for the purpose I found that these mysterious personages whom I had mistaken for magi were principally authors and were in the very act of manufacturing books I was in fact in the reading room of the great British Library an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages many of which are now forgotten and most of which are seldom read one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair and draw buckets full of classic lore or pure English undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought | F |
| - | |
| Being now in possession of the secret I sat down in a corner and watched the process of this book manufactory I noticed one lean bilious looking wight who sought none but the most worm eaten volumes printed in black letter He was evidently constructing some work of profound erudition that would be purchased by every man who wished to be thought learned placed upon a conspicuous shelf of his library or laid open upon his table but never read I observed him now and then draw a large fragment of biscuit out of his pocket and gnaw whether it was his dinner or whether he was endeavoring to keep off that exhaustion of the stomach produced by much pondering over dry works I leave to harder students than myself to determine | G |
| - | |
| There was one dapper little gentleman in bright colored clothes with a chirping gossiping expression of countenance who had all the appearance of an author on good terms with his bookseller After considering him attentively I recognized in him a diligent getter up of miscellaneous works which bustled off well with the trade I was curious to see how he manufactured his wares He made more stir and show of business than any of the others dipping into various books fluttering over the leaves of manuscripts taking a morsel out of one a morsel out of another line upon line precept upon precept here a little and there a little The contents of his book seemed to be as heterogeneous as those of the witches' cauldron in Macbeth It was here a finger and there a thumb toe of frog and blind worm's sting with his own gossip poured in like baboon's blood to make the medley slab and good | H |
| - | |
| After all thought I may not this pilfering disposition be implanted in authors for wise purposes may it not be the way in which Providence has taken care that the seeds of knowledge and wisdom shall be preserved from age to age in spite of the inevitable decay of the works in which they were first produced We see that Nature has wisely though whimsically provided for the conveyance of seeds from clime to clime in the maws of certain birds so that animals which in themselves are little better than carrion and apparently the lawless plunderers of the orchard and the corn field are in fact Nature's carriers to disperse and perpetuate her blessings In like manner the beauties and fine thoughts of ancient and obsolete authors are caught up by these flights of predatory writers and cast forth again to flourish and bear fruit in a remote and distant tract of time Many of their works also undergo a kind of metempsychosis and spring up under new forms What was formerly a ponderous history revives in the shape of a romance an old legend changes into a modern play and a sober philosophical treatise furnishes the body for a whole series of bouncing and sparkling essays Thus it is in the clearing of our American woodlands where we burn down a forest of stately pines a progeny of dwarf oaks start up in their place and we never see the prostrate trunk of a tree mouldering into soil but it gives birth to a whole tribe of fungi | I |
| - | |
| Let us not then lament over the decay and oblivion into which ancient writers descend they do but submit to the great law of Nature which declares that all sublunary shapes of matter shall be limited in their duration but which decrees also that their element shall never perish Generation after generation both in animal and vegetable life passes away but the vital principle is transmitted to posterity and the species continue to flourish Thus also do authors beget authors and having produced a numerous progeny in a good old age they sleep with their fathers that is to say with the authors who preceded them and from whom they had stolen | G |
| - | |
| Whilst I was indulging in these rambling fancies I had leaned my head against a pile of reverend folios Whether it was owing to the soporific emanations for these works or to the profound quiet of the room or to the lassitude arising from much wandering or to an unlucky habit of napping at improper times and places with which I am grievously afflicted so it was that I fell into a doze Still however my imagination continued busy and indeed the same scene continued before my mind's eye only a little changed in some of the details I dreamt that the chamber was still decorated with the portraits of ancient authors but that the number was increased The long tables had disappeared and in place of the sage magi I beheld a ragged threadbare throng such as may be seen plying about the great repository of cast off clothes Monmouth Street Whenever they seized upon a book by one of those incongruities common to dreams methought it turned into a garment of foreign or antique fashion with which they proceeded to equip themselves I noticed however that no one pretended to clothe himself from any particular suit but took a sleeve from one a cape from another a skirt from a third thus decking himself out piecemeal while some of his original rags would peep out from among his borrowed finery | B |
| - | |
| There was a portly rosy well fed parson whom I observed ogling several mouldy polemical writers through an eyeglass He soon contrived to slip on the voluminous mantle of one of the old fathers and having purloined the gray beard of another endeavored to look exceedingly wise but the smirking commonplace of his countenance set at naught all the trappings of wisdom One sickly looking gentleman was busied embroidering a very flimsy garment with gold thread drawn out of several old court dresses of the reign of Queen Elizabeth Another had trimmed himself magnificently from an illuminated manuscript had stuck a nosegay in his bosom culled from The Paradise of Dainty Devices and having put Sir Philip Sidney's hat on one side of his head strutted off with an exquisite air of vulgar elegance A third who was but of puny dimensions had bolstered himself out bravely with the spoils from several obscure tracts of philosophy so that he had a very imposing front but he was lamentably tattered in rear and I perceived that he had patched his small clothes with scraps of parchment from a Latin author | E |
| - | |
| There were some well dressed gentlemen it is true who only helped themselves to a gem or so which sparkled among their own ornaments without eclipsing them Some too seemed to contemplate the costumes of the old writers merely to imbibe their principles of taste and to catch their air and spirit but I grieve to say that too many were apt to array themselves from top to toe in the patchwork manner I have mentioned I shall not omit to speak of one genius in drab breeches and gaiters and an Arcadian hat who had a violent propensity to the pastoral but whose rural wanderings had been confined to the classic haunts of Primrose Hill and the solitudes of the Regent's Park He had decked himself in wreaths and ribbons from all the old pastoral poets and hanging his head on one side went about with a fantastical lackadaisical air babbling about green field But the personage that most struck my attention was a pragmatical old gentleman in clerical robes with a remarkably large and square but bald head He entered the room wheezing and puffing elbowed his way through the throng with a look of sturdy self confidence and having laid hands upon a thick Greek quarto clapped it upon his head and swept majestically away in a formidable frizzled wig | J |
| - | |
| In the height of this literary masquerade a cry suddenly resounded from every side of Thieves thieves I looked and lo the portraits about the walls became animated The old authors thrust out first a head then a shoulder from the canvas looked down curiously for an instant upon the motley throng and then descended with fury in their eyes to claim their rifled property The scene of scampering and hubbub that ensued baffles all description The unhappy culprits endeavored in vain to escape with their plunder On one side might be seen half a dozen old monks stripping a modern professor on another there was sad devastation carried into the ranks of modern dramatic writers Beaumont and Fletcher side by side raged round the field like Castor and Pollux and sturdy Ben Jonson enacted more wonders than when a volunteer with the army in Flanders As to the dapper little compiler of farragos mentioned some time since he had arrayed himself in as many patches and colors as harlequin and there was as fierce a contention of claimants about him as about the dead body of Patroclus I was grieved to see many men to whom I had been accustomed to look up with awe and reverence fain to steal off with scarce a rag to cover their nakedness Just then my eye was caught by the pragmatical old gentleman in the Greek grizzled wig who was scrambling away in sore affright with half a score of authors in full cry after him They were close upon his haunches in a twinkling off went his wig at every turn some strip of raiment was peeled away until in a few moments from his domineering pomp he shrunk into a little pursy chopp'd bald shot and made his exit with only a few tags and rags fluttering at his back | K |
| - | |
| There was something so ludicrous in the catastrophe of this learned Theban that I burst into an immoderate fit of laughter which broke the whole illusion The tumult and the scuffle were at an end The chamber resumed its usual appearance The old authors shrunk back into their picture frames and hung in shadowy solemnity along the walls In short I found myself wide awake in my corner with the whole assemblage of hookworms gazing at me with astonishment Nothing of the dream had been real but my burst of laughter a sound never before heard in that grave sanctuary and so abhorrent to the ears of wisdom as to electrify the fraternity | B |
| - | |
| The librarian now stepped up to me and demanded whether I had a card of admission At first I did not comprehend him but I soon found that the library was a kind of literary preserve subject to game laws and that no one must presume to hunt there without special license and permission In a word I stood convicted of being an arrant poacher and was glad to make a precipitate retreat lest I should have a whole pack of authors let loose upon me | B |
| nbsp | L |
Washington Irving
(1)
Poem topics: , Print This Poem , Rhyme Scheme
Submit Spanish Translation
Submit German Translation
Submit French Translation
Write your comment about The Art Of Book Making - Prose poem by Washington Irving
Best Poems of Washington Irving