Edited by two of her friends:
MABEL LOOMIS TODD & T.W. HIGGINSON
by Emily Dickinson（艾米莉。狄更斯）
(1830-1886)

IN A LIBRARY.

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.

His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;
Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.

×××

The heart aks pleasure first,
And then, excuse from pain;
And then, those little anodynes
That deaden the suffering;

ANd then, to go to sleep;
And then, if it should be
The will of its Inquistor,
The liberty to die.

*****

Much madness is divinest sense
To diecerning eyses;
Much sense the starkest madness.
'T is the majority
In this, as all, prevails.
Assend, and you are sane;
Demur,----you're straight dangerous
and handle with a chain.