Retiring to these deserts...

Retiring to these deserts now in peace,
with few but learned volumes to be read,
I live in conversation with the dead,
and listen with my eyes to those deceased.


Though sometimes impenetrable they seem,
they mend or they enrich all that I own;
and they, in quiet counterpointed tonesawake, address this life which is a dream.

Francisco de Quevedo 

Quevedo, perhaps the greatest poet in the Spanish language, is also the author of a most beautiful praise of literature and books. Those dead ones that you live in conversation with and whom you listen to with the eyes.