March 31, 2011

  •   It happens everytime.  I go to clean out the books on my shelves and I can hardly do it.  The books are stacking up, they are falling off the shelves, they are double parked, it makes sense to do it, but I can't!  There are so many good books to read, we collect them for another time, we know we'll read them sooner or later (and many we do), but we can't keep up.  There is only one thing to do......clean out the shelves, get rid of those books, surely we don't need them all.  So, I start going through them and I don't get very far.  I picked up one book, titled,  "A Merry-go-Round of Modern Tales" thinking I could surely get rid of it, until I opened it up.  On the inside cover it says:  "Paula Jean" from Mother and Daddy, Xmas, 1927".    But the real clincher was when I saw the illustrator, "Lois Lenski", one of my favorite children's illustrators and authors.  I couldn't get rid of it.  So there you go, "best laid plans of mice and men".  I come by it naturally of course.  Both my parents were avid readers, my Dad was a schoolteacher, and every room in our house growing up had books, sort of like my house today.  Can you ever have too many books?  I guess not!  My parents didn't think so, I don't think so, and for the most part my kids don't thinks so! 

    In one of the old books I found on the shelf was a book of poems that belonged to my mother, titled,
    "The Radiant Quest" by Grace Noll Crowell.  Believe it or not, one of her poems is entitled, "Upon Rearranging a Shelf of Old Books".  So,  the poem for today:

    "Upon Rearranging a Shelf of Old Books"
    Almost I feel the pulse-beat of the ages,
    Now swift, now slow, beneath my fingertips.
    The heart-throbs of the prophets and the sages
    Beat through these bindings, as my quick hand slips
    Old books from dusty shelves in eager seeking
    For truths that flaming tongues of the ancients tell;
    For the words of wisdom that they still are speaking
    As clearly as an echoing vesper bell.

    Here is the melody that lies forever
    At the deep heart of living; here we keep
    The accurate, recorded discs that never
    Can be quite silenced, though their makers sleep
    The deep long sleep, so long as a seeker finds
    The indelible imprint of their moving minds.