Featured Poem: The Library by George Crabbe

Continuing with our wintery theme, today's Featured Poem is brought to you by Frances Macmillan our Head of Publishing and host of The Reader Podcast. Frances has also been putting together some festive gift guides featuring book recommendations for the literature lover. She reads 'The Library' by George Crabbe.

The Library 

But what strange art, what magic can dispose
The troubled mind to change its native woes?
Or lead us willing from ourselves, to see
Others more wretched, more undone than we?
This BOOKS can do;--nor this alone; they give
New views to life, and teach us how to live;
They soothe the grieved, the stubborn they

chastise,
Fools they admonish, and confirm the wise:
Their aid they yield to all: they never shun
The man of sorrow, nor the wretch undone:
Unlike the hard, the selfish, and the proud,
They fly not sullen from the suppliant crowd;
Nor tell to various people various things,
But show to subjects what they show to kings.

By George Crabbe