Introduction to Yale Class of 1956 Book Exhibit at Sterling Library

God gave us language, more than just a touch,
in the beginning. Michelangelo
was quite tangential. After growing food
and settling, our ancestors inscribed
the clay they used for homes with characters
that had the power to communicate.
Their lessons would no longer die with them;
their children need not recreate the rim.
Three centuries ago, some clerics met
to form a school for "Lux et Veritas”
with forty books in Saybrook, which was soon         
expanded ten fold by a donor's gift.      
Then, with inspired teaching, students came,
perhaps for football or to sing or join
fraternities, but left in awe of what
was on Old Campus and now Sterling shelves.
It's fitting we should offer homage to     
the heart of this great university,
to this voluminousness, to this faux
cathedral's inventory of our hope.
We bring no private dissertations here,
unpublished manuscripts, or manuals
for industry. No articles except
those that can be collected as book,
but, rather published volumes, TV scripts,
and chapters from a text or Internet,
accepted without value judgments, with
in limits of an allocated space.
We bring the work of artists, scientists,
of agents, Senators, and journalists,
of educators, doctors, diplomats
who yearn to share discoveries and joy.
From what they read in alcoves and from what
they learned, our authors have the need to write
which can assuage the culture, to enhance
through insight or experiment the known.
We bring their work to this exhibit now,
as Magi’s modern frankincense and myrrh,
to testify that what was proffered here
in nineteen fifty six was not in vain.