The world of books is a commonwealth

Of nations with no boundary lines.

High overhead its air is health,

And along its roadways all the signs

Say onward, further, there is more.

The youngest traveler climbs a hill

Breathless with words, and all before

Rise further ranges for his will.

This happiest journeying goes on

Over and under the daily years,

World within world, and ages gone,

By generations of mountaineers.

It never ends, but where begins

This other, this braided parallel,

Himself all heroes and heroines?

The youngest traveler can tell,

Who climbs up novels, news, machines,

Music, and art, adventure starred,

Poetry, history, magazines -

Please, may I have a library card?'

These citizens have come of age

When in they proudly, shyly stroll,

After their hundred hundredth page -

Please, my library card is full.'

Then the world of books is all of it theirs,

Everything printed theirs to read.

These are the hungry, hurrying years,

A fever, a starving, a nameless need.

Ask that this hunger be all they know.

That would be blessing rich to give.

Ask that this distance be all they go,

Only this illness while they live.

Too rich, for real life too unreal,

Because all books come twice the size

Of life, because the books reveal

More than enough life to make them wise

It happens to them quietly, though.

On afternoon after school, at night -

I'm going down to the library now.'

Then at home, the face in a page's light.

Those are golden years. The silver years

Come after the traveler's return

From the real journey into real fears,

Loves, wars, and little to unlearn,

But knowing what he does not know.

He has read the huge library of the world

Everywhere the well-traveled go,

And now his battle-flags are furled.

He has his purpose, happy and shrewd,

Of deepening wisdom, without waste,

Scientist to infinitude,

Lawyer, explorer, without haste,

Collector of theories and of coins,

Ghost stories and philosophies;

He reads and reasons, adjusts and joins

Earth, heaven, and the seven seas.

Such legislation is not made

In the street, but at the capitol

Of the world of books, the colonnade

Of bookshelves round a library wall.

Where stands a library, there stands

The capitol of the world of thought

In any language, and all lands,

The truth as said, and truth as sought.

We are here tonight by Mystic shores,

Citizen-readers counting with pride,

The hundred years since we opened doors,

And asked the world to come inside.