Brief Encounter in the Library

Brief Encounter in the Library, Scarce Worthy of Remark

 

A pile of dusty tomes was at my side

I read on, yet felt most unsatisfied.

My mind, unquiet, sought another theme

When in she walked, this vision, Love’s young dream.

I was entrapped by something in her face

That scarce seemed to belong in this dull place.

It filled me with an awe that was unknown

To my poor heart, that always walked alone.

 

She took a seat, the one that opposed mine

I feigned to work, but could not read a line

But yet to raise my eyes I did not dare

Some trembling fear inside made me forbear.

Her perfume sweet was carried through the air

It swam into my mind and lingered there.

As time passed on, I raised a timid glance

Her eyes were turned on me, perhaps by chance.

Our glances met, and locked, and remained fixed

As though enchantment held us in its grip

The seconds passed, yet neither made a move

Her limpid eyes held mine without reproof.

In them I recognized something akin

To untold feelings I carried within

Yet more than that I cannot quite explain

Words cannot tell of feelings felt so plain.

 

But time, suspended, must soon be resumed

Each moment in its passage is consumed.

This moment was, and then our eyes did part;

Its only trace, a pounding in my heart.

I bowed my head, and returned to my books,

Nor did I dare to chance another look.

I tried to read, the words they seemed to melt;

Though oft at learning’s alter I had knelt,

It seemed now futile, a strand of the great lie

Uncovered by a movement of her eye,

Yes, so it seemed, or had I read it wrong?

A mind that solitude had known too long.

But as I pondered on what had just passed

She rose, her books were gathered in her grasp.

 

She rose, and turned, and left, I watched her go

The rest is silence, what more would you know?

A brief encounter, scarce worthy of remark

Yet still within my mind it lit a spark.

There was that in her face that stopped my breath

Her dark eye’s lustrous gaze still lingers yet

Within my mind, and in my dreams she comes

And there she softly speaks in unknown tongues.

I wake, then I recall myself, and feel

A pang of loss to return to the real.