Emily Dickinson

In a Library

IN A LIBRARY.
A PRECIOUS, mouldering pleasure 't is
To meet an antique book,

Book as person

Dickinson personifies the book as male throughout—'his century,' 'his hand.' Books were masculine in Latin (liber), and 19th-century scholars were overwhelmingly male.

In just the dress his century wore;
A privilege, I think,
His venerable hand to take,
And warming in our own,
A passage back, or two, to make
To times when he was young.
His quaint opinions to inspect,
His knowledge to unfold
On what concerns our mutual mind,
The literature of old;
What interested scholars most,
What competitions ran
When Plato was a certainty,

Plato as certainty

When Plato was still alive to answer questions directly, not filtered through centuries of interpretation. 'Certainty' means firsthand knowledge, not philosophical doctrine.

And Sophocles a man;
When Sappho was a living girl,
And Beatrice wore

Dante's Beatrice

Beatrice Portinari died at 24 in 1290. Dante immortalized her in *La Vita Nuova* and *Divine Comedy*—the 'gown' he 'deified' is both her actual dress and his literary treatment of her.

The gown that Dante deified.
Facts, centuries before,
He traverses familiar,
As one should come to town
And tell you all your dreams were true:
He lived where dreams were sown.

Dreams were sown

The book's author lived in the actual past that readers can only dream about. 'Sown' suggests those historical moments planted the seeds of present culture.

His presence is enchantment,
You beg him not to go;

Vellum heads

Vellum is calfskin parchment used before paper. Old books literally shake their pages (heads) when you turn them—the personification extends to all volumes on the shelf.

Old volumes shake their vellum heads
And tantalize, just so.
Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation

Reading Notes

The Scholar's Time Machine

Dickinson treats reading ancient books as time travel with a living guide. The book isn't just an object—it's personified as its author, who can 'take your hand' and lead you backward through time. This wasn't metaphor to 19th-century readers. Before modern historical scholarship, reading Plato or Sappho was the closest you could get to meeting them.

The poem's historical name-dropping is precise. Plato (428-348 BCE), Sophocles (497-406 BCE), and Sappho (630-570 BCE) represent Greek philosophy, drama, and lyric poetry. Beatrice and Dante jump forward to medieval Italy (1290s). Dickinson picks figures who existed as real people but now survive only as texts—exactly the paradox she's exploring.

CONTEXT Dickinson had access to her father's extensive library and received rigorous classical education at Amherst Academy and Mount Holyoke. For a woman denied access to universities where male scholars studied these texts professionally, old books were her direct line to intellectual tradition. The 'mutual mind' of line 11 claims equality—she and these ancient authors share the same concerns, despite centuries and gender barriers between them.

Notice 'mouldering' in line 1—the book is literally decaying, which makes the pleasure 'precious' because it's endangered. The physical deterioration of the object contrasts with the immortality of the voice inside it. This is why she 'begs him not to go'—not the author (already dead) but this specific material copy that might crumble.

What 'Tantalize' Means Here

The final word 'tantalize' is the key to the whole poem. From Tantalus in Greek myth, punished by being able to see but never reach food and water. Old books tantalize because they promise complete access to the past but can't deliver it.

Dickinson knows the fantasy in lines 21-23 is impossible: no book can 'tell you all your dreams were true' or make ancient history fully present. The author 'lived where dreams were sown,' but we only get the harvest—the finished text, not the living moment. The books 'shake their vellum heads' like someone saying 'no' or 'not quite'—they offer proximity to the past, not possession of it.

This makes the poem self-aware about reading's limits. Yes, it's a 'privilege' and 'enchantment,' but it's also frustration. The past remains tantalizingly out of reach, no matter how 'venerable' the hand you're holding.