Shut Not Your Doors, &c.

The poem

SHUT not your doors to me, proud libraries, For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet needed most, I bring; Forth from the army, the war emerging-a book I have made, The words of my book nothing-the drift of it everything; A book separate, not link'd with the rest, nor felt by the intellect, But you, ye untold latencies, will thrill to every page; Through Space and Time fused in a chant, and the flowing, eternal Identity, To Nature, encompassing these, encompassing God-to the joyous, electric All, To the sense of Death-and accepting, exulting in Death, in its turn, the same as life, The entrance of Man I sing.