Louis MacNeice

 

“The British Museum Reading Room”

Under the hive-like dome the stooping haunted readers
Go up and down the alleys, tap the cells of knowledge--
    Honey and wax, the accumulation of years--

Some on commission, some for the love of learning,
Some because they have nothing better to do
Or because they hope these walls of books will deaden
    The drumming of the demon in their ears.

Cranks, hacks, poverty-stricken scholars,
In pince-nez, period hats or romantic beards
    And cherishing their hobby or their doom
Some are too much alive and some are asleep
Hanging like bats in a world of inverted values,
Folded up in themselves in a world which is safe and silent:
    This is the British Museum Reading Room.

Out of the steps in the sun the pigeons are courting,
Puffing their ruffs and sweeping their tails or taking
    A sun-bath at their ease
And under the totem poles--the ancient terror--
Between the enormous fluted lonic columns
There seeps from heavily jowled or hawk-like foreign faces
    The guttural sorrow of the refugees.