In response to Rapaire's concerns about the projected tearing off of the roof of his library:

A library without a roof
Is good -- it brings perspective
Enjoins the seekers after truth
From haughty, cold directives
And stays them from pretence, aloof
And condescending,

To walk among the whispers there
Of ages wise and good, while overhead
The local star goes by, and summer air
Reminds the scholars, looking up in dread
From curls of complex, mental snares
Into whose coils they have been led,
That life does not happily bless
The unbending.

And if, immersed in tides of facts
And paradox and half-moved arrows,
The scholar, rumbling in his tracks
Should be distracted by some sparrow
Or a humming bird's sudden attack
And finds the world had grown less narrow
And fields, more than fences, could use
Some mending.

This would not be a bad thing, in truth
I think I'd like to study there--
A hall of books without a roof,
Where dew can fall on students hair
Where stars can visit in the listening booths,
And winds can turn the leaves in pairs
And send the index cards awry, in a dance
Unending.