UGA ARCHIVES

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE LIBRARY!  DEDICATION POEM

The Director of the University of Georgia News Bureau in 1953, Claude Davidson, Jr., composed the dedicatory poem that meanders through the booklet.  Davidson also designed the booklet and his lines are distributed to work in conjunction with its photographs.  The text reads:

Upon the wind a voice
Across the Library steps came saying:

"Here is knowledge"

Listen carefully
For it is an elusive tone

It has spoken in the chant of riveted steel
And whispered to a symphony lover

To youth its voice is swift
And to age its echo clear

It sings a song of enchantment
In strange and far-away places

And at the turn of a corridor
It tugs at the Scholar's heart

In a thousand books and more
It patiently waits to be heard

While in some library carrell a student
Stirs with the turn of a page

As the voice comes saying

"Here is knowledge
Muted but Sure"

- Claude Davidson, Jr.