A Monumental Room, Full of the Dead

  My Study
by John Bruce Norton 

I sit within my study, clothed from floor
 To roof with books, a monumental room,
 Full of the dead: as in some ancient tomb
 Urns ranged around hold all that was of yore
 A living race, my shelves are but the store
 Of all that part of genius, which the doom
 Of Time hath spared from death's eternal gloom:
 Each volume is the fruit a life-time bore.
 And quaintly thus my reverie I nurse;
 'When I perchance have joined those silent ranks,
 'Some may read me, as others I, with thanks
 'For joy or profit; little thinking they,
 'How little portion of myself display
 'These fragmentary hints embalmed in verse.'