Verse Provoked by a Recent Visit to the Stacks (1951-65)
All the forlorn futile faces
Drifting, ghostly, through the iron and book-filled cages
In a sunken filtered light remote from day -
How often in these melancholy places
(so like old dungeons in the Middle, Dark or Christian Ages)
Am I impelled by fearful piety to pray:
O Lord, preserve me from the fate of these poor hacks
Who bury their lives in library stacks.